Here, Piggy, Piggy.<\/p>\n
By Kate Chamberlin<\/p>\n
I like barbecued pulled pork and bacon as much as the next person.\u00a0 I even understand the concept of \u201cfrom farm to table\u201d.\u00a0 I\u2019m just not so comfortable with meeting my meal before hand.<\/p>\n
Our son and his wife recently feted their eldest daughter with a pig roast for being graduated from Penn State University, Behrend College of Communications.\u00a0 Truly a wonderful accomplishment and worthy of a\u00a0 party. It also coincided with the Memorial Day weekend.\u00a0 Of course, preparations for such a large event had to start days, even weeks,\u00a0 ahead of time.<\/p>\n
Invitations were sent out primarily via FaceBook, word of mouth around town and their church, with a few personal telephone calls.\u00a0 The borrowed tables and\u00a0 chairs were promised, a bounce house for the children and other assorted yard games were planned, a port-a-potty rented, salads, casseroles, sauerkraut, and baked beans were made, and the piggy-on-the-hoof purchased.<\/p>\n
Friday afternoon, the squealing piggy was brought home and made comfortable for his last day on-the-hoof.\u00a0 He was slaughtered Saturday afternoon, dressed and put on the spit very early Sunday morning to be ready at 3:00 PM as dinner. The reports I heard about the pig\u2019s demise were upsetting and I regret that some of the younger children (ages 9-14) were there when the pig was shot and butchered.\u00a0 However, children brought up on a farm would be well versed in the life cycle of farm animals raised for our food.\u00a0 As an elementary teacher, I tell myself that it was a good \u201clife lesson\u201d.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sorry to have missed that experience, though.\u00a0 Our daughter-in-law\u2019s philosophy is to not name the animal.\u00a0 It is always just called \u201cDinner\u201d. However, it soon circulated that \u201cHenry\u201d was \u201cDinner\u201d.<\/p>\n
By the time my husband and I arrived, the pig was well past caring.\u00a0 As we stood talking at the spit pit, our son noticed the line of clouds and said he didn\u2019t like the looks of it.\u00a0 Within 30-minutes, the clouds opened up with huge, cold raindrops.\u00a0 Fortunately, there was a tent, the garage, and the house in which we took refuge.\u00a0 The storm didn\u2019t last for long, but there were loud cracks of thunder and strong winds that sent our grandchildren\u2019s pup tents sailing.\u00a0 The children and numerous dogs raced after the flapping tents amid much laughing, barking, and slipping on the wet grass.\u00a0 It made for lots of memorable fun for everyone.\u00a0\u00a0 We needed to go check in to our Comfort Suite Inn and returned to find our son pulling well cooked chunks of pork off the bone.\u00a0 I touched the pig\u2019s nose and thanked him for his sacrifice.\u00a0 Folks were piling their plates with steaming pulled pork and other fabulous foods.\u00a0 There was a canoe filled with ice to keep the sodas, bottled water, wine, and keg cold. The children enjoyed sticking their hands into the cold water and splashing each other, but it was a unique way of self-serving the beverages.<\/p>\n
Instead of going home on Sunday afternoon with our daughter,\u00a0 our two grandsons opted to stay at the party with us. We left the party around 9:00 PM to go soak in the Inn\u2019s hot tub and swim in the pool.\u00a0 When we were in our pajamas, we watched \u201cMyth Busters\u201d in our room, and fell asleep tired, clean, and happy.<\/p>\n
Monday morning we ate at the Inn\u2019s free breakfast bar and headed home.\u00a0 We had lunch at Burger King before dropping the boys at their home.\u00a0 It was a quick trip, but well worth the time and effort.\u00a0 What a wonderful tribute to our new college graduate and Memorial\/Decoration Day, 2012.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here, Piggy, Piggy. By Kate Chamberlin I like barbecued pulled pork and bacon as much as the next person.\u00a0 I even understand the concept of \u201cfrom farm to table\u201d.\u00a0 I\u2019m just not so comfortable with meeting my meal before hand. Our son and his wife recently feted their eldest daughter with a pig roast for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":644,"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642\/revisions\/644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katechamberlin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}