I got out of work around 3 on Friday to head over to our
CEO's house and keep Sugar Daddy busy as he built up coals for our fire pit. He had to put wood in every 20 minutes. I actually helped while drinking my beers.
Saturday's night dinner was sitting out on the counter, wrapped up and waiting for the butcher. There were also three huge packs of beef that we were cooking, too.
The nice thing about having warehouses is you can get plenty of wood pallets to burn. We went through this stack, the small one behind it and most of the stack in the back.
The flames got incredibly high and hot right after we put the wood in. It would cool off just in time to add more fuel. They actually have a brick fire pit dug out in their backyard. We've cooked the meat for the holiday party for as long as I can remember.
Stinson worked on cilantro and I chopped carrots and onions. We cooked the meat with a bunch of spices, tomatoes, yams, cilantro, carrots, onions and apples.
I gave Sugar Daddy my camera since he was down with his duties and I was chopping. Being a boy, he had to do a self portrait but at least he included Tina in it.
The guy on the left is from a farm in Kansas and he's an official butcher. He brought his knives, hooks and even a bone saw. The guy on the right is our pit boss and he was learning how to cut the tenderloin out of the pig. The boss cooked them up on the grill for our post-pizza dinner snack. Good stuff!
The pig's kidneys had a little present in them - urine. Of course, we (and, by we, I mean the boys) had to squeeze it all out.
First, there was playing with one pig eye. Then, the tongue got cut out and passed around. Finally, we created a
Yamster out of the pig eyes, tongue and the one yam we had left. Disturbing? A bit. Funny? Hilarious!
Each piece of meat got wrapped up with the
mixings in cheesecloth then put into a burlap bag which was wrapped up in metal.
Susan was our genius food wrapper. She's been on the pig crew since it began.
The final package was the pig head. Our
CEO's wife was against it because it was kinda gross but she got outvoted.
The coals were incredibly hot and pretty deep by the time we were ready to put the food in.
The first layer on the coals was made of prickly pear pieces. Then, we put some soaked pallets on top of the prickly pear to add some moisture and a little more protection from the intense heat.
The final step before putting the bundles in the ground was to dunk them into beer. We were careful to keep the pork and beef apart the whole time, including putting it in the ground.
The final steps were to putting the metal lid over the pit and covering it all up with about three inches of dirt. The boys all posed behind the buried pit for our last official picture on the night. We got everything wrapped up by 8:30 or so and the plan was to dig it up at 2 PM on Saturday. I have no doubt it was yummy but I'll get a full report at work tomorrow.
