Our Meatcation finale was smoking a whole suckling pig which we purchased from Whole Foods. It weighed about 26 pounds. We started by sticking it in the smoker around 4AM and I also started slow cooking some more oatmeal to be ready later in the day. We took shifts attending to the smoker’s temperature and smoke levels with Andrew going first and me taking over at around 7:30. In an attempt to keep the smoker hot, we got bricks which we wrapped in foil to place inside the smoker and we ghetto rigged it with some insulation.

When it was my turn, the temps had seemingly dropped to an abysmal 120F, which was far from our goal of about 200F-220F (I think that’s right). On top of that, our utility lighter ran out of juice, so I had to run to Walgreens to get a replacement. I eventually got new charcoal going and heated the smoker back up. When it was Mark’s turn to take over, he discovered that our thermometer was placed in the wrong area and was reading inaccurate temps… turns out it was about 50-80F hotter than it was reporting, so we probably accidentally went over our desired temperatures thinking we were far under.

Mark and I ate some oatmeal, and then we all went to our customary ultimate frisbee game at 1PM. We returned and Andrew and Mark prepared the sides/sauces, watched Florida lose to Alabama, and then finally broke into the pig at around 6:30PM.

Al, Ochs, Weishan and her family, Chad, Sam, Ryan and Angell came over (or were just around) to help us conquer the mass amounts of meat we had. Success!

Now for some pics…

Our pig, brand new out of the box… his name is Wilbur.

We stuffed Wilbur with various types of apples (and I think an onion as well).

Ryan fell asleep.

Customary apple in the mouth and the pig wrapped in banana leaves:

Checking up on the pig temps:

Almost ready to take out!

Preparing the table for Wilbur:

Wilbur’s head was one of the first things to fall off:

It’s go time!

And thus concludes Meatcation. =)

As a bonus, here’s a video of Andrew gouging out Wilbur’s eyeballs. Enjoy!

And here’s one of stuffing an apple in Wilbur’s mouth:

Day six was a bit of a day off… we decided to do something a bit exotic and got some sweetbread which we grilled.

Then, we chilled a bit until Ryan and I went to III Forks for our Bazaarvoice Technical Services team goal celebration. I continued the meat eating and got a filet mignon which was acceptably good although I wouldn’t say amazing.

After II Forks, we went to Chancy’s to celebrate the Nancy/Ochs bdays and hung out for a while. Now, it’s suckling pig smoking time for our finale! Stay tuned…

Meatcation day five consisted of chili and steaks. (some shots taken by Sam)

We made corn bread with the chili and sweet potatoes with the steaks. We also picked up our suckling pig. Woo! Tomorrow, we’ll start smoking it… and hopefully finish for Saturday. =)

Yes, day four of Meatcation. Today is the day of the elemental bacon. Bacon = bacon of the earth, scallops = bacon of the sea, and duck = bacon of the sky.

The day started with preparing the duck for smoking:

After it was cleaned, we started on a whole black drum fish for lunch, which we baked in a cast of kosher salt.

We also made plantains:

The fish is done!

Back to the duck…

The fish is gone.

It’s smoking time:

Andrew made dessert – a lemon almond tart.

As an aside, I also received my tauntaun sleeping bag! Woo!

It’s bacon + scallops time:

Elyse, Heather, and Steph joined us as we neared completion:

Woo! That was awesome. More pics in the flickr Meatcation set.

Mark and I started the day off by eating bacon with oatmeal we slow cooked the entire night (we got oats from Whole Foods, not that instant stuff =).

Then, we smoked salmon for lunch:

And had some mangoes with that:

Then, we (by we, I mean mostly Mark and Andrew) went totally awesome on ribs, despite the rain causing a lot of havoc on maintaining the appropriate temperature in the smoker. Despite that, they turned out pretty great:

And… we wrapped up the meal with peas:

Tomorrow, bacon of the elements (bacon, scallops, duck) for dinner and some undetermined whole fish for lunch.

For day two of Meatcation, as planned, we started smoking a large chunk of brisket and made our own sausages from scratch. Here’s a video of the sausage stuffing craziness:

I will say that our sausages were a great success despite there being doubt we could actually stuff them properly (we did not have the specific tools to make the job easy). Andrew and I got creative (as you can see from the video above) and made it work. For dinner, we also made our own BBQ sauce and cream corn.

I’ve added these to the Meatcation set on flickr.

Meatcation has begun! We kicked off the week with some tasty lamb chops with asparagus. We also built a questionable structure to guard our flame against the water from the heavens.

As usual, Flickr has more Meatcation pics.

I also somehow managed to watch Star Trek three times last week (four if you count once with the commentary). Although, to be fair, I did fall asleep half of the last time through it (food coma). Here are some photos of my crazy sisters from Thanksgiving:

We plan on starting the smoker at ~3AM to cook brisket for Monday night. On to day 2!

Andrew, Mark and I reserved our suckling pig for next week. Woo! We don’t have any idea how large it is or how much it will cost, but we kind of like going into it blind. =)

If anyone plans on dropping by on a day other than Saturday (where we will likely have plenty to go around), either:

1. Bring your own meat for us to cook
2. Let us know well in advance so we can buy enough and tell you how much money to bring

Now to obtain a smoker…

One year after The Great Food Roadtrip of 2008, there will be MEATCATION!!! Behold version 0.87 of the Meatcation agenda:

Open house dates will be announced and people are free to show up whenever bringing meats of their own for us to cook. =)