THE PBE

My brother-in-law Tom loves food adventures. He has flown to Memphis to become a barbecue judge, spent a weekend in Shreveport for Mudbug Madness (a crayfish festival), and has oysters flown to him for holidays.

Like my uncle Pat, his love of food makes him a great cook. Both men, now that I think about it, have a way with what Homer Simpson called "the magical animal." (Not THAT way, as far as I know.)

One of Tom's dreamed-up food adventures was to cook Homer's favorite animal luau-style. That's to say, digging a hole, making a big fire in it, pitching a whole pig (dead) on top, and covering the thing up for the day to let it cook.

Last February, Tom had conned myself and my family into doing the deed up at our family cabin in rural Wisconsin. After talking with Tom about the roast during a family dinner in February, I excitedly asked my sister, Wendy, what she thought about the Pig Burying Event. She wouldn't even acknowledge I spoke to her. She just kept walking out to the car without dignifying the comment with so much as a roll of her eyes. Clearly, this had been a topic that Tom had perhaps discussed beyond my sister's capacity for pretending to be interested.

Wendy's response matched that of most of the respectable women I know (an admittedly short list). My then-new girlfriend, Joan (one of the other respectable women I know) was equally unimpressed.

"Sounds DISGUSTING," she said.

That settled it. This was going to be a guy's weekend. A time to drink beer, play bocce, and eat lots of pig. Calendars were consulted and July 19 was the date.

I loved the idea, and began to try drum up some bodies to help eat a whole pig. When asked what I was doing that weekend, I would say, "I'm going to bury a pig and eat it. Want to come?" Surprisingly, very few accepted the invitation.

So I tried to better hone my patter.

"We are cooking a pig man-style. Would you like to join us?"

The typical response was a cheap shot about my abilities to pull off the feat. So I gave up trying to drum up supporters and had fun with it. I began to refer to the event as the Pig Burying Event.

A few weeks before the PBE, Tom sent out an e-mail describing all the things we'd need. The list included sheets of plywood, twine, chicken wire, banana leaves, apple cider, 20 head-sized round rocks, apples, garlic, salt, pepper, a meat thermometer that could buried, a whole pig (dead) and lots of beer. I bought the pig from my local butcher, uncle Pat dug the hole with his tractor, and Tom found the rest.

The day arrived, and Tom and my Dad were up at 5 am building the fire. I rolled out of bed, well, later than that but just in time for the rock-throwing event. Now that I think about it, most really enjoyable activities involve rocks. Seriously. The list of good things that involve rocks includes dirt biking, rock-skipping, mountain climbing, mountain biking, and beer-drinking (which is often done on rock ledges, outcroppings, crushed rock driveways, and so on). Well, maybe I'm reaching on that. But rocks are good fun, of that I'm sure.

Anyway.

Before you can throw the rocks in the fire, it has to be really really really hot. Like hotter than the sun (I think). We didn't have a thermometer, so once the fire appeared to have reached solar power, we threw the rocks in. With gusto. In fact, we threw all the rocks in the pit just for good measure.

The fire went out.

Lots of thinking and discussion ensued. Or at least some did. After about 15 seconds of careful consideration, we took all the rocks out of the fire pit. With shovels. And then with our hands. The fire had not been quite solar-hot. More like stove-top hot. Or even slightly lukewarm-hot.

We restoked the fire and got it really really hot, and put the rocks in about 20 minutes later. This time, we put them on the EDGE of the flames and the fire kept burning.

According to what we knew, the rocks needed to become white-hot. Our method got them maybe gray-hot. But we had hot rocks, a dead pig, and lots of beer. How could we go wrong?

While the rocks heated, the pig was prepped. It was rubbed with salt. Garlic cloves were inserted into cuts in the skin, and the carcass was lined with banana leaves. A temperature probe was inserted in the rear haunch, with the lead left loose to be attached after the pig was buried. Hot rocks were carefully placed inside the carcass, which was then closed up and wrapped in apple cider-soaked burlap. The final step was to wrap the pig in chicken wire, which is used to hold it together and put it in and lift it out of the pit.

Next a sheet of tin was placed over the smoldering fire and hot rocks. Another sheet of tin goes over that, and then a piece of fiber board goes on top of that. We covered the fiber board with dirt, and then the hard work began.

We had to set up an awning, drag out lawn chairs, and find the bocce set. This wasn't easy, believe me. The awning came in a tiny little box and had maybe 7 million parts to put together. We had to get my aunt Kay to help and after lots of thinking and reconfiguring, the awning was up and looked like a saggier version of the picture on the box it came in.

Finding the bocce set was another challenge that led to some panic. You can't serve pork without bocce. It's un-American, or at least not much fun. We found the bocce set buried underneath Christmas decorations in my uncle's cabin.

We prevailed. Meaning we opened beers.

Every hour or so, we'd check the temperature of the meat and then break to play bocce, drink beer, or maybe both. The temperature was monitored carefully and my Dad proved that math teachers never truly retire by recording the temperatures and then drawing a graph showing the projected temperature of the pig at 6 pm.

In the end, the gray-hot rocks proved to be not quite enough heat. We were shooting for a final temp of 170 or so, and only reached the high 150s. That was enough to kill botulism and any other dangerous things that live in dead pigs, or so we surmised. Plus it was late and we had 20 people to feed.

We didn't expect that many, but my friend Sam had flown in a group of cleanly scrubbed college-age rowers to stay at his Dad's cabin (which is a short potato cannon shot away from my family's cabin). Why they were there is too complex to explain, suffice it to say that Sam is always dragging people who should know better to redneck places. And trying to get them to do shots with him down at the tavern.

He's also the guy who forced his wife to come up with an entirely new guest list for their New Year's Eve party by drinking an entire bottle of Maker's Mark and then explaining to the deacon's wife the meaning of the word "MILF."

So these college kids had no idea what they were in for. But by the time we were unveiling the pig, they were getting an idea.

Anyway, we carried the pig up to the garage, cut off the chicken wire, and unwrapped it. The smells were magical enough to do justice to Homer's favorite animal. The skin was very, ummm, white and not terribly appetizing, but the meat underneath was succulent.

Gloves were donned, and the process of stripping the meat off the pig began. Actually, feeding the masses also began, as the entire crew crowded around the pig and began eating pieces of the animal. People were stuffing giant slabs of pork into their mouthes, feeding like a wolf pack on a fresh kill. It was the most carnivorous experience of my life (with the possible exception of eating a freshly-grilled freshly-killed cow in Bolivia, which I'm still convinced was some kind of skinny mule because it was so lean and it tasted like ass so it doesn't count).

Pat came up with the idea of just passing out plates and letting people serve themselves, which we did, and 20 hungry people were fed with enough left over to feed most of the township (maybe another 25 people--it's a pretty remote township).

Noone got botulism or died, the college kids didn't appear permanently scarred by the event, and we drank all the beer.

Success!