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!