Fun & Feast Friday

Lots of fun on Friday-
It was the annual IDS Thanksgiving feast and wiffle ball home-run derby...

As per usual, I has a hand in the cooking, my contribution was the prep and cooking of a roast pig...
A 66lb porker named Roxanne.
I picked her up from Terry's on Penman Rd on Thursday afternoon. (1.79/lb. Can't beat that with a stick.)
When I placed my order I asked that they butterfly the carcass, but I guess they aren't really set up to do that, so all they did was cut her in half from stem to stern. Eh- mai wenti.
And since I really didn't want to gross anyone out, I had them remove the head.
After a liberal soaking in mojo criollo, I made slits in the meat to insert slivers of garlic under her skin and throughout the meat. I put her in the cold box to steep and I hit the hay since to have the things ready for this particular shindig I had to be on site at about 4:15am...


About 4:30 AM, and it's 40 degrees; Prepping the Caja China for action. Roxy is in the cardboard box.

I had two helpers volunteer to assist, although it was mostly for immoral support...
Jingalls showed up about 5:00, so we made a pot of coffee then we got down to business. Roxy was strapped to the rack, put into the Caja China and we lit the coals at 5:20.
At 5:45 we started the timer and started to watch the internal temperature of the meat.
(NB: Always use a remote probe thermometer. We used one this time and it worked out great.)

About 6:00 our other partner in crime arrived with more coffee...JessicaS improved our topics of conversation, and to a somewhat lesser degree, our language. There were only a few occasions we had to ask her to go "earmuffs-on" mode to spare her delicate feelings as we discussed Florida gun laws, TSA madness, restaurants, and travel spots.

About 7:15, it's about 52 degrees - Cooking is well underway, and the sun is just coming up...

Other participants began arriving as we neared the 9:00 hour-

We had just put on the next load of charcoal when RonH, KathyK and CynthiaW arrived to shoot the breeze and enjoy the heat... (Jess is cooking marshmallows over the fire.)


How's she doing?
We opened the box after several additional loads of charcoal, and it looked like things were just about perfect.

Internal temp in the ham was 168°... the round things are slices of sour oranges, in case you were wondering.

Ok... Let's flip her over to finish cooking and crisp up that skin!

Yours Truly and JIngalls doing the flip... Easy does it.
The welding gloves are a pretty important  item to have on-hand (heh) too.

Next- to help render the fat and get good heat distribution we have to
modify the packaging...

Gotta get at the fat under that skin... Nurse! Scalpel please!

All right, no scalpel ... I'll just use my Cutco Santoku instead...

X marks the spot.

Lest you think we were all alone, rest assured, we were not.
Directly behind us, RallisP was manning the turkey fryers.
The Big Bossman fried 6 turkeys to go along with our petite porker...
(After all, we were feeding about 110 people, give or take a few.)

Rallis standing guard over the pots of hot oil... The guys in the background are watching the wiffle ball home run derby. That competition stared about 10:30 in the morning and lasted several hours...


Jeremy putting one across the plate... Zach is one of the 200 point targets in the outfield.

Ok... time to serve up some pork.

Jingalls and I open up the Caja China... Internal temp on the meat- 190°.

Wow.

"That's beautiful! What is that, velvet?"

We remove the pork from the box...

WayneD and BenC are carefully supervising us...

The top rack is removed and we're ready to start pulling and cutting....

At this point I have to put down my camera and attend to business-
We were serving at 1:00pm, so we started picking & pulling about 12:15, after giving the meat a short rest and we had the meat at the serving table right on time...

Some other pics from the shindig-

Life is uncertain - pick up your dessert first, otherwise you might miss out.

Dennis trying to decide where to start at the dessert table...


Random folks in line for the food...

We got smart this year and rented tables & chairs to make the actual meal easier.
It worked out well, I think...

Random IDS folks-


More random IDSers...


And the last group...

It was a beautiful day- although it started out cool (40°) it finished out in the mid 70s, with clear skies.

Great food, great fun, great folks...
Days like this remind me why I work at IDS.

TBG- ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE