How did we get here? And where are we now?

Holy Moly!

What a busy summer! We’ve only just begun, and its been such a success. John and I spent a lot of weekends this summer cooking for people, searing our fingertips and eyebrows, and having a great time in the process. In fact, we've been so busy cooking and experimenting with new ideas, that I’ve had no time for blogging on any of my pages. 

We’ve discovered a lot of new tips and tricks from books, the internet and from plain experience. Our pig roasting and BBQ skills have gone past whatever I imagined we could do.

We even took second place in our first amateur pulled pork competition…against some formidable competition (and not all amateur at that.)  Now we are booking gigs for Fall events, and thinking about the “big picture” for future endeavors. 

 

There are cool tales to tell and great photos to share. Look for more blogs soon. When I have more time, I’ll bring you up to date with all the fun and deliciosity that we’ve been part of this summer.

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Even though the summer is officially over, with Labor Day done and gone, sunny autumn days and cool autumn nights will soon be upon us. There’s nothing more festive than a pig roast, coupled with chilly nights, the scent of autumn in the air, a cold beer in one hand and a plate of delicious fire roasted pork in the other! You’ll have a party that everyone will remember.

Our September weekends have booked up already, and October is looking like it could be busy as well so give us a shout soon to lock in your next epic event!

Maybe I will write a serious blog post soon...but for now I am just here to log in and get this set up on the website.  That's right...we're going to have a website soon!!

Second time’s the charm

Geoff and Lisa got engaged at the State Park. That was the start of the next great pig roast. Actually, I think the idea of having a pig roast for the wedding reception was floated a few months later at an ECDD  karaoke fundraiser, but in any case, these two were going to have their wedding on the track at an Elm City Derby Damez bout and then have a reception (read …giant party) afterwards, and there was going to be a pig roast.

The whole thing was massive affair, with a band, both derby teams, plenty of friends and family, sumo wrestling suites, and a 125lb roasted pig for the main course. Since John & I were now “experts,” we were going take care of the cooking and roast the pig.

For our part, the pig roast couldn't have gone smoother if we had tried. Right from the start, this one was perfect. I suppose our experience on the first pig really paid off. We had learned a few tricks and put them to use immediately. Let me share a few tips that helped us:

1. If you are renting a roaster, make them light it at the rental place before you leave. Turns out this was spot on. The guys couldn’t get it going and had to fiddle with the regulator before it finally lit up. They also showed us some handy tricks if there were problems during the next morning’s ignition, and we had a number to call should problems arise. Good stuff.
2. Make sure you load the pig on the spit correctly. Loading the pig on the rotisserie this time was easy. No issues. Even though the pig was almost twice the size, we remembered the difficulties from the first time, and we had piggy loaded up and secured in about 10 minutes. No wiggly lopsided spin on this pig. Legs down, back up, clamped evenly.
3. Use chicken wire. By the end of the cooking time at the first pig roast, meat was beginning to flop off the pig and into the roaster. We were so afraid that a shoulder or ham was going to drop off and turn into charcoal. This was accentuated by the fact that piggy wasn’t secured as well as she could have been the first time. (see number 2) We took no chances this time. We wrapped a length of chicken wire fence around the pig, and attached it to the rotisserie arms.  Now it was safe and secure.
4. Watch the temperature. We were roasting a pig at the end of August, and it was pretty warm out by 9 in the morning, so it didn’t take long for the roaster to heat up. It did take a good hour of fine tuning the gas, though before we got the temperature to remain stable at 235.

So here we were, 10 in the morning, staring at the roaster and chatting. We had hours to go yet before the reception, so we talked about cooking and restaurants, played endless rounds of corn hole, checked on our tasty friend occasionally, and chilled in the shade.

At some point, somebody said, “You know, we can do this for people, and its fun and easy…and nobody around does this. We should make a business.” This sparked a lot of talk and ideas. Even when we got chatting about other things, the conversation would eventually come back to having our own Pig Roast/BBQ/catering business.

Well, later that afternoon, we went to the Geoff & Lisa’s wedding (yes, this time we left someone watching the pig to make sure temp and fire weren’t an issue)

When we got back, things were ready to roll. We pulled the pig out of the roaster and off the spit, and started carving up deliciosity.

It was a big pig and there were tons of hungry folks arriving. Luckily Eric and Ryan helped out with the carving. In less than an hour we had pork galore; super delicious pork; pork cooked perfectly; more pork than you could shake a stick at; porkapalooza; and man, that piggy looked good.

There was so much food, but honestly, I can’t say that I had much, I may have over sampled as I was carving, so I was stuffed before we even finished. Pork, beer, champagne and wedding cake! What else do you want at a wedding, anyway?

The rest of the night was one huge epic party, with corn hole tourneys, sumo wrestling, live music, midnight karaoke, crazy naked people, hot tubs, more live music and camping. It was the perfect day! And the idea for pig roasting business idea was ultimately born!

Our First Pig Roast

The Elm City Derby Damez End of the Year Party – November 2011

It wasn’t long before we got to play at having a real pig roast. I honestly don’t remember how it happened, but somehow, it was decided that the Derby Damez would have their end of the year party at my house in Westmoreland, and that we would do it as a pig roast. I actually think two ideas converged…John & I wanted to do a pig roast and the Damez wanted an end of the year party. Why not kill two birds with one stone. In any case, the pig roast was planned.

This was our first pig roast and although we worked on making fool proof plans, there were a few hitches and a number of “learning experiences.” In the end, it was all good and loads of fun, but I can tell you that until we actually ate, John & I had a few stressful and very trying moments that brought the old blood pressure up into the danger zone.

First things first. We didn’t have a roaster, so we rented one at the only place in southwest New Hampshire that has one.

I picked it up on Friday night, just before they closed, stopped at the butchers, picked up the pig and brought everything home for the big day.  I could barley sleep that night for the excitement. It was worse than Christmas.

It was late November and unseasonably chilly, down below 30 degrees that evening, so there was no problem leaving the pig in the truck... except that it got down to 15 degrees that night and somewhat solidified our little 70lb piggy.

We were up before light, and after unpacking and cleaning or little friend, we started trying to roast it, around 7 am.  First we had to get it onto the spit. It was quite a struggle to figure out how to load the dam thing onto the rotisserie, and the frigid morning air made it just a little bit painful on bare fingers. Finally, after about 20 minutes and a few choice words, we had Miss Piggy in the roaster and ready to go… then the first disaster struck.

Try as we might, the roaster would not light. We were stumped. I had been told that there was a trick to getting it started, and we followed the directions to the letter, but …nothing. Panic!

We called the rental place and after explaining our dilemma, they said it sounded like a bad regulator, and that they would be up shortly. The blood pressure was starting to inch up. We had to get this thing going! Everything we had read said that this was supposed to be an 8 hour roast, at least.

Finally, at 10:00 AM, the service guy came by, the regulator was swapped out, the roaster successfully lit, and the pig began spinning on the spit. Thank god! We adjusted the flame until we had the correct roasting temperature and then hopped in the truck to go pick up some supplies and Daisy. I know what you are guessing already… mistakes number two & three!

ONE: It takes a while for the fire to adjust to the “real” temperature that the roaster is going to run at, especially on frosty 20 degree mornings… and TWO: NEVER should the pig be left unattended. OK, so now we know

After picking up supplies, Daisy and coffee, we arrived back at the house. The roaster was smoking and the pig smelled Deeeelicious! The excitement was tangible. This was going to be sooo cool!

Well, our excitement was brought to an abrupt halt when we opened the roaster. There inside was one black, charred pig. Apparently the heat kept climbing after we left, and our injected butter/cider mix leaked out a bit, causing a flare up. This was awful. Ruined! Charcoal and nothing else.

I felt the world closing in and like I was going to die. From epic party to epic fail in two hours. John was entirely the voice of calm & reason. “No problem, we got this, its fine,” he kept telling me. We basted the pig, turned down the flame, and checked the meat temp. Whew! Truly, there was still juicy, succulent pork inside. It only looked bad on the outside.

Well, it didn’t take very long for the pig to be done after that. Another lesson we learned, although not critical on this day, is that these closed roaster units cook a pig in about 1/2 the time as an open fire does. Around 2:30, we shut the roaster down, let things cool for a bit and then took the pig out and over to the carving table.

 

This is where it felt like our luck turned. Black or not…the pork was more delicious than anything I had ever tasted. Everyone was starting to get hungry and people were filling up plates as we carved and pulled pork.

I’ll admit, as I carved, it was one portion for the serving plate & one for me. I can’t even begin to describe how good that pork was.

We had more than just pork, though. The girls had brought along a table full of wonderful side dishes and decadent deserts. I supplied a couple cases of a delicious, strong beer that I had brewed. We lit the fire pit, set up chairs, and pretty soon a huge feast commenced.

Once the initial gorging had finished, people began visiting in earnest, AND the band started to play.Yes, we even had a band for this gig. Yeehaw Jihad was there doing their debut performance.They set up on my patio and played all afternoon. What else could you ask for?

The fire pit was roaring, people were partying, dancing, eating and smiling, and Derby girls were off jumping on our trampoline. A band, a pig, homebrew, fire pit and derby girls…

Yes, truly an epic party!! So what if it was a little cold, or maybe if there were a few panicked moments. All in all it turned out great! We were hooked. There were happy faces everywhere and we knew that we had to do this again. The next pig roast would be even more epic!

As luck would have it, we got the opportunity just 9 months later at Geoff & Lisa’s ECDD wedding reception. It was a huge affair, a fantastic party and the place where we decided that maybe we should make a small business out of all this fun..

Where did it all start

Can you point to a specific event or happenstance and say “That’s it! That’s what started all of this!”? Each point in time has importance; but there was a choice, a conversation or a decision that preceded this spot in time and that lead you down your current path… something, that if changed, would not have brought you to where you are now. So honestly, I can’t tell you that “This time, this event… This is the thing that created J.R. Smokey’s”

I can tell you a story of a few key events that seem instrumental for me. Probably the biggest singular event was Tracy joining the Elm City Derby Damez. That was what lead up to us meeting and getting to know a group of the sweetest, most loving, sexy and kick ass group of ladies that you'd ever want to meet. Ladies that welcomed Tracy & I into their circle of friends with open hearts, and invited us to come along on their adventures. I’d point to some of those adventures as the seeds for our growth into a BBQ & Catering business.

During the derby season in the summer of 2011, we went to a party with some of the Damez, along with many of their significant others, at Daisy Duke Nukem’s Uncle Eric’s place… a place fondly called Sander’s State park. That was the first time I really got to know the girls outside of a roller derby ring or fundraising event. I also met a bunch of the husbands, boyfriends, family members and guys that were part of the whole crew, including John.

So there we were, cooking up a storm. There were all kinds of tasty foods roasting and smoking on the grills. John & I started babbling about food, BBQ, charcoal vs. propane, the best BBQ sauces, beer…all kinds of stuff. At one point, I mentioned that someday I really wanted try and to do a pig roast. We got talking about the whole idea and decided that sometime we should do one… you know, the kind of sometime that’s out there, but like as not, may or may not ever happen. Beer talk.

We didn’t go much further than that on the idea front. There were no big epiphanies that night, nothing major scheduled, no big plans for future endeavors formulated. The pig roast idea was just left floating out there in someday world.  One of those great beer ideas. After that chat, we all went on our way, enjoying the food, the party, the beer, the bonfire and the great company of friends.

Who knew that only three months later, we would actually be hosting our first Pig Roast… at an end of the season party for the Derby Damez… and that party would hurtle us down the path even further towards the birth of J.R. Smokey’s.

The Birth of J.R. Smokey’s

It starts as a random remark, a joke, a shared bottle opener at a late night BBQ at a camp way up in Vermont. The next thing you know, you have a catering business and plans for a future restaurant. How the hell did this happen? How did a life long dream, something to do someday manifest itself and all of a sudden become a successful enterprise with the promise of huge growth, and a ton of fun?

Its a long story. I’ll tell you that story over the next blog or two. I’ll also keep you informed and up to date on current events, what’s cookin’ and general Smokey’s shenanigans.

So welcome to J.R. Smokey’s blog. Stop by often. See what’s new and what we’re cookin’ up. Leave a comment, ask a question, book a gig. We’ll be glad to see you!