Day Zero Project #11: Attend a pig roast.

Before I start I'd like to offer a quick warning. If you are a card-carrying member of PETA or have a pet pig, you probably don't want to continue reading this.

Seriously, click away. I'm pescatarian now and was vegan for a dozen years or so before that, so I know what I'm talking about. Rather than read on perhaps you can just click on over to the Reggae Shack website and read all about their curry tempeh. It's amazing and you should make it a point to get to Gainesville, FL and try it.

Now that we've taken care of that, lets get to the pig roast part!

As previously stated, I don't eat pigs. Thankfully the goal that someone had was to "attend" a pig roast, not to "eat some pig" at a pig roast. That would have been substantially more difficult. But, I've been to a pig roast before and I have no problem with it.

As a matter of fact, I'm much more open to a pig roast than one might assume for the simple reason that I think it's important to know where your food comes from and how it gets to your table. Meat isn't something that just happens to show up pre-ground or sliced and ready for your table, so if you can go to a place, pick out the pig, roast the whole thing while it still looks like a pig and then enjoy the fruits of that labor, more power to you!

And when you start off with this, you are pretty sure you are making a pig:

Last time I went to a pig roast years ago the thing still had a head on, so I was a bit bummed this time around. I could have had much freakier pictures, plus it would seem that the cheeks are good eatin'.

And how do you take this weird pinkish blob of animal and turn it into something you can eat? You use a magical device called a Caja China.

Or if you are real old-school you can just bury the pig underground. But this version seems much more sanitary to me.

Pig goes in looking like this:

Pig comes out (many hours later) looking like this:

Then you carve it up and eat it. I was a few beers, a shot of rum, a misguided tasting of some weird apple ale, 6 games of Beco Ball and about 20 games of cornhole in at this point, so I completely forgot to take a picture of how it looks post-carving. Let's just say it looks a lot more like the stuff one is used to eating.

And did I try it? Absolutely not. The great part about a pig roast is that it's like a giant pot luck and I was able to fill up with all of the sides, including the two that we brought:

Vegan-style Mofongo

Sweet Rice Fritters

Oh, and did I mention the best part about a pig roast, even for you vegan-types? The day is centered around cooking something that takes hours and doesn't require a lot of attention. So what does that mean? It means you get to spend a full day with people that you like doing whatever it is that you like doing. And any day spent like that is a good day in my book.