Yep. That's a whole pig.

A couple of weeks ago, we decided to throw a party. It's summer, and that was a good enough reason for us. It's been a while since we had a pig roast, so we figured we'd invite a bunch a people over, and eat ourselves a pig. In our past events, we had always had the pig cooked and delivered the day of the party. But in a fit of inexplicable inspiration, I suggested to my Bride, "let's cook it ourselves this year!"  She said 'Yes'.

This is why I married her. 

Unfortunately, it had been more than 25 years since I had been involved in cooking a pig. And that was mostly just watching an older set of cousins and in-laws do all the work, and occasionally getting to fetch another beer from the cooler for an uncle. My memory didn't offer much up in way of pig-cooking technique. I felt strong in the Google-fu, though. I figured we could sort something out. 

A few searches later, and I was able to sort out several distinct & passionate schools of thought on backyard pig-cookery. There's your classic "on-a-spit-over-fire" group (divided into the fancy 'electro-spit' models and the classic stand-there-and-turn-it-by-hand groups). Then there's your "dig a hole, light a fire, and bury the pig" group (this is the one my cousins fell into). There's the luau group. (I discarded this immediately. I'm from Georgia. My people do not cook with pineapple juice.)  And, of course, there's the "backyard porker experimental surgery" group. (Though maybe that was just my father, The Surgeon.)

Since I knew we'd be getting back from Maine less than 24 hours before the pig would have to meet fire, I figured I'd go for something straightforward, simple, and classic. My original plan was to rent a spit. But the nearest place I could find was about a 5 hour round trip away. Which was a bit much, really. 

I talked it over with a buddy from work with a bit of recent piggery experience, and my butcher, Mike, who was sourcing me the pig.  "There's nothing that an hour at Home Depot can't solve," says Mike.

Mike is a very wise man. 

So the evening before the roast, the kids and I started stacking cinderblocks. 

You may note that in an effort to really bring a little Appalachian-authenticity north for the occasion, The Boy is wearing no pants.  That's not something you can train for, I might add. That was pure, beautiful instinct on his part.

Within an hour, with a few dozen blocks and some re-bar, we had the makings of a pig roast. I told my neighbors that our 'hood had gotten a little classy lately, and was due for some cinderblocks. I'll try and refrain from putting a car up on them later on. 

For my OCD friends, the blocks are intentionally askew a bit to create some air flow opportunities. Or some other scientificly convincing reason that kept me from having to put too much effort into things.

I screwed some sheet metal to the bottom side of a plywood 'lid', and we were ready to go. I wasn't sure exactly how long it was going to take to cook a whole pig, so I bought a mess of charcoal, just in case. 

In the morning, I woke up around 6:30 and stretched out our piggy friend on an empty bag of feed across the tailgate of my truck. I scored the skin on her back with a razor knife a bit in a rough diamond pattern, and gave her a brisk "you sure look tasty" deep tissue massage with a couple of cups worth of kosher salt. 

And without being all judgy, if you don't like the thought of handling that much pig that early in the morning, go ahead and think about the pack of bacon sitting in the bottom drawer of your fridge.

Unless you're a vegetarian. And then you can go ahead and be grossed out if you want. 

My pig was a hair or two over 75lbs, dressed. (Literally, in this case. The butcher had shaved her for me, and there wasn't much more than one or two hairs left on the carcass).  I started off with most of a bag of charcoal on either end of the oven - nothing in the middle. Turns out, this was too much, as the oven quickly rose to over 300 degrees. I wanted it to sit around 200 to 225F. With the pig butterflied, it was going to cook quicker than on a spit, so I let the coals cool some, and left the lid off for a while and warmed her back up around noon, adding a few briquettes every once in a while as the afternoon wore on. 

The meat thermometers at the grocery store had the "your pig is done" label someplace around 175 degrees. That gave me as good a target as any, I figured. 

Note: that's a sheet of concrete re-inforcing mesh under Wilburina. The meat gets tender enough that the joints will just fall apart when you flip it (and the last hour or so, you want it back-to-the-fire to get the skin nice and crisp). According to the Google, it's important to not use galvanize steel for this. I'm not 100% on the technical process, but apparently "galvanized" can be loosely translated as "will give off fumes that make you want to die when heated". Which sounded like it would be a bit of a damper on the party vibe. It limited my options, but again, Home Depot had an option that fit the bill nicely. 

A few hours later, and we had a pig ready to be served. I filled the time trying to make my Bride think I was working hard over the pig, and avoid the really hard stuff that was going on in the side dish preparation and chicken frying in the house.  

Take an extra look at the conveyance. That's the handle from my garden cart. I figured I should keep with the theme. 

We ended up with about 80 people in our backyard (including a Juilliard-bound fiddle player I met at the Farmer's Market the week before), and a whole mess of sides to accompany the pig of honor. Our guests gave us way too much credit for the seriously low effort it took to turn out a handsome pig. The skin was crisp and a little bit salty. The meat was juicy and tender. We even threw some ears of corn that one of our guests brought from her garden on the grill to roast. 

As people munched and pulled and enjoyed and some of my friends and I arm-wrestled for the choicer bits of crisp crackling (I made Carolina-style vinegar/mustard BBQ sauce to top things off), we wrapped up the evening with a movie on an outdoor screen (the Goonies! Old school awesome), and chatting in the balmy summer sunset. After the last of our friends left and I went out to pick over the pig carcass, we had about a good half-tupperware container left of pork to put away.

And with that, I'm declaring it a glorious victory of the pig cooking.

Meanwhile, if anyone needs some extra cinderblocks (with scratch-and-sniff bacon aroma), please send them my way. 

When bad things happen to good chickens

Last week I went out with the Critter, and picked up five new pullets. When one of my friends asked why I was adding more (this took us up to around 28 or 29 birds. I sort of lose count), I explained that the Grady bird attrition rate is fairly high, and it paid to plan ahead. 

We hadn't had too much loss lately, actually.  Other than a couple of our older hens dying an unexplained but natural death (that happens sometimes, I've learned, and unless you see signs of some kind of infection that carries to the other birds, it's not a great worry), we hadn't lost any since last fall.  But then a couple of weeks ago, I gave one of our young birds to a neighbor. The other young pullets aren't yet laying. And the older birds had stopped laying quite as often, cutting into the Critter's farmers' market sales.  I figured it wasn't a bad idea to lay in a few spares, so we found a handful of Auraucanas (they lay pretty pastel green or blue eggs) at point-of-lay (about 5 months old) on Craig's List, and added them to the flock. 

The first time I added new hens to the flock, I tucked them into the coop at night, after the other hens had gone to sleep. I had read or heard that the other hens would accept the new birds in the morning, as if they had always been there (chickens being one of the dumbest creatures in the barnyard - this I can attest to from experience). Turns out, however, that our birds were either the slightest bit more observant than most, or one of the new birds got lippy with the established crew. The pecking order messily exerted itself, and we were down one young hen. Since then, we have established a system where I section off one corner of the run with temporary fencing, and let the birds live side-by-side for a few days to a week, separated by the fence. After a few days, the birds are allowed to mingle, and they all seem to get along, although for a month or so, the young birds tend to move around together in a huddle, as if there is protection in numbers. 

At the end of last week, I came home and sat on the couch. It was one of the hot days we've had lately, and I ordered the Critter out a bit early to check on the chickens' water and feed. I dozed, and enjoyed the quiet and humid heat. Summers in Massachusetts peak with a couple of weeks of sultry humidity that remind me of the extended months of heat in Georgia, but never drag out to the point where it becomes unwelcome. The long, very long winter up here, make it all pretty bearable. 

I woke up from the doze to the Critter's declaration.

"There's just a head."

"zzz..wha?"

"I opened the door, and there's just a head."

I figured the heat, or the sleep had gotten to me. 

"A chicken head?"

"Yes."

"Where was the rest of the chicken?"

"I didn't see it."

"Was it dead?"

"I think so."

I had built the coop with two doors, an exterior door opening to a sectioned off end part where I mounted the electrical box and stored the feed, and then the interior door that opens to the main coop. I'm always getting after the Critter who closes one or the other, but not always both. I walked down with her to see what she was talking about.

Sure enough. Just inside the outside door was the head of a chicken. No sign of struggle, or any remnants of the rest of her body. The feathers from her neck neatly curled under to conceal any gruesomeness. It was one of our middle-aged hens, a small, almost bantam-sized golden something-or-other. The other hens were not bothered, and I scooped up the sad little head and tossed it into the woods. 

The next day, I went out to check again, and another bird had been decapitated. This time, the carcass was left inside the run, and the head was missing. It looked as if a raccoon had reached through and snatched at her, making off with whatever would come away, and trailing feathers for several feet. 

I tossed the carcass into another part of the woods, and gathered up a great ball of fur (and other leavings) from our St. Bernard to scatter around the coop and the woodline nearby. This has generally kept predators away in the past, and I admit I've been a little lazy about this rudimentary protection lately. This second victim was a little harder to take with equanimity, though. For one, this made two birds in as many days. And secondly, this was the only remaining hen that sported a name. "Juicy".  She was big, and white (I forget the breed), and lorded it over the other hens. She was about the only hen we've ever had, in fact, that never sported a bare spot or looked even the slightest bit ruffled from a pecking order dispute. She was clearly untouchable. 

I'm proud to say that in both cases, the kids both gave an "aww, poor chicken," but recovered pretty quickly. There was more conversation about what kind of predator it might have been, and whether or not we had done enough to deter it now. And while we're out of town this week, we've got friends stopping by daily to check in on things. I've let them know already that they're blameless for any new feathery disappearances. 

So, to answer your question, Terry, this is why I buy chickens with regularity. 

I wonder if the veteran  birds hear the horror stories of the disappa

My sexy new cooker

On our first "we're moving to England" trip, we saw a house with a massive iron stove standing kind of free-form in the middle of the kitchen like a Victorian monument. This was the first time I had ever seen an Aga. 

The story goes that a Nobel prize-winning Swedish physicist, forced to stay home and recuperate after breaking his leg (in a vigorous physics lab experiment gone wrong? the story doesn't say), was watching his wife cook and was struck by the thought that there had to be a better way. So he invented a new stove.  This story is on Wikipedia, so I assume it to be 100% true. 

The Aga is unlike other stoves. It is always on. It has no temperature settings. It is made of solid iron. It is as beautiful as it is functional. I knew that I had to have one. 

The Aga is, in a word, 'different'. I had my heart set on a "4 oven" cooker. And because there are no temperature settings, each of the ovens maintains a different heat level. Roasting, Baking, Simmering, Warming. In clockwise order. Something about induction or air-flow or whatever keeps the heat constant and ready. The 1,300 pounds of iron used to form the beast mean that the heat is retained. 

It also puts out a bit of heat, warming your kitchen by 5 degrees or so, and creating a homey atmosphere that pets and kids love. When we moved to Massachusetts and experienced our first several feet of snow, I knew that if I had ever found the right place to bring in an Aga, this was definitely it. 

One problem: they're only made in England. Which means that every Aga has to get on a ship. And the ships only land in Chicago(...! Apparently, they come down the St. Lawrence and across the Great Lakes). And the ships are slow. And you have to pay for everything in Sterling. Which means saving every penny for years in an "Aga" jar hoping that one day, when we grew up, we too could experience the joys of cast iron cookery on a mammoth, British scale. 

Part of the issue was going to be re-configuring the cabinetry.  All of it basically had to come out to make room for the stove. And then new cabinets back in around it. Which meant saving more pennies, and maybe scrounging in couch cushions and behind car seats. But finally, finally we went to the store to pick out the new addition to our family. 

We chose the red one.

It took weeks and weeks to come together. First, the stove got lost at sea. Or put on the wrong boat. Nope, not that boat. The next boat. And when I said "next", I actually meant the one after this one. No, no. The other one. It will one day show up in the US, don't worry. Oh! It finally arrived! Wait. No, sorry. That was somebody else's. Oh wait! It's here! Um. We ordered the wrong kind. Please, Mr. Grady, put your heart back into your throat. We can simply convert this kind to the other kind you ordered with a couple of days effort. See? No problem!

Beyond the insane wait for the ship to arrive and then the stove to be assembled by a man about 3 days younger than the house we live in, each step, no matter how simple or complex, took 7 days to complete. One week, remove existing cabinets. The next week, move the gas and water line (for a pot-filler faucet above the stove). Time passes. Install the stove (but don't hook it up). Wait a week. Install the base cabinets. Have the countertop templates cut. Wait a week. Install the counter tops. More time passes. Install the tops of the cabinets. Wait. Tile. Wait. Faucet. Wait. Trim. Wait hook up the stove.

OK. Now. Ready, set cook. 

When cooking in an Aga, you've got to remember that a) you can't change the temperature, and b) the oven doors are solid iron, and you're not going to smell anything cooking through them.  It's like cooking by feel, rather than science. Want something to crisp? Move it up and to the right a bit. Want something to slow down a bit? Stick it over in the simmering oven. After a while, you develop a connection with your stove that lets you kind of suss out when something is done based on as much instinct as calculation.  

And besides which: it's a giant red stove. How could you not love it?