Volunteer mystery squash

Anyone know what kind of squash this is? It grew (along with about 20 others) where I'd fed some pigs some wilted produce earlier in the year. It's pretty big, weighs about 15lbs.

Viking Pig roast

You see a lot of talk in the media about getting closer to your food, and knowing where it comes from, and Christian, his twin brother Jake and their friend Timb did just that this last weekend.

If you'd like to have a whole pig for BBQ, I'm happy to supply.

Special thanks to Heath Putnam of woolypigs.com for the referral!

They purchased a BBQ pig from me, live and on the hoof, and prepped it for their BBQ themselves. Gutting, scraping, mounting it on a rotisserie -- they did the whole thing.
They sent me a note about their experience, you'll find it below the pictures.


They rented this electric rotisserie from millers rent-all in Edmonds for $25 a day -- having it automatically turn is a great thing!
(sorry, I couldn't figure out how to rotate this picture because I'm a klutz. )
Golden brown and delicious!

Here's his note:



Thanks so much for the pig!


It made for an awesome party. Short story: We stopped just as we pulled onto the forest service road to reskewer the pig so it would fit better on the spit before we got to camp for some people that might get squeamish.



We stuffed it with garlic and rosemary, sewed him back up, bound his legs with wire and the whole body with string. We carried him victoriously into camp to cheers of excitement, did some touch up details on the body and started up the spit.



We got him on at around 2pm and he cooked for 7 hours until the hams got done right around dark. Everyone was crowding around as we took it over for carving.



The skin was golden brown all over and moist throughout. Everyone raved about how good it tasted. We had about 25-30 people at the party--all dressed up in goofy viking hats and clothes and drinking beer at this great spot about an hour from the farm near the Mt. Pilchuck trailhead. We had about 15 pounds of leftovers which we divided up between the birthday boys and about 10 pounds that others took.



Just thought I would send a note. It was a great event and we really appreciated your help through the process!




Christian

You're welcome, Christian. Glad you and your friends enjoyed it!

Lard: the new health food. Rendering lard

I'm going to confess. Fat tastes good. It tastes good in ice cream, it tastes good on a steak, heck, it even tastes good in a stir fry (whaddya think olive oil is?)

I've been a fan of fat for a while, and I do that for the taste, but it turns out that animal fat, far from being the demon we've been led to believe, is actually not as bad as the most-common forms of vegetable fat.

Here's a couple of articles comparing animal fat and vegetable fat.
That said, as with any food, moderation is the key.

Now for the process: How to render lard

When I slaughter a pig and have it cut-and-wrapped by someone, I ask them to save all the fat trim. They'll discard it by default, so I make sure I'm clear that I want them to save it. It usually comes in 25lb bags, frozen.

I'll cut the fat into chunks about a pound each, for easier handling mostly. You can just throw the slabs in if you want. It doesn't make any difference in the final product. After filling the pot with chunks of fat, I put in two cups of water, and put the pot on the stove at high heat until the water boils. I'll reduce the heat then to a bare simmer and let the lard render very slowly. It'll bubble and ping while it's rendering -- that's the water being evaporated out of the fat.

Slow rendering is the key to producing paper-white lard, which is your goal. For this particular batch I started with 60lbs of raw fat from two pigs.

After the fat has rendered for a while, I ladle off the lard. I use small, square loaf pans lined with aluminum foil, and strain the lard through a paper towel as I ladle it out of the pot.

Here you can see the lard in the loaf pan. It's a light yellow color at this point, but it'll turn white as its refrigerated. If you overcook your lard, it'll be brown when cooled. Remember, slow render. For this batch it bubbled on the stove for 3 days. I'd periodically add more chunks and ladle out the finished lard.

While you're doing this it's often worthwhile to remember how delicious foods are that are fried in lard, how tender pie crusts are, how great refried beans are with a bit of lard and so on and so on.

The small square loaf pans result in 2lb blocks of lard, which are a handy size for home cooking uses. You can pull out a block, cut off a hunk, and put the block back into the freezer. It keeps for a year or so. I take the aluminum foil packages, dip them in hot water to free the lard, and then put them into 1 gallon ziplocks which are the closest size to the block. You take as much air out of the bag as you can as you seal it.

I should probably figure out how folks package butter because this is basically the same product, and the waxed-paper might work well too. I always end up with a big ball of lard-covered aluminum foil after this.
I always label stuff with the date of production/slaughter/cut and what it is. You can see that the overall color of the lard is pretty close to paper white. The 48lbs of lard produced from the original 60lbs of fat will last me this coming year.