LC -

by LC

Going Big With the Pig

A little while ago I asked my Uncle G. the secret to roasting an animal on a spit. Not to be outdone, my brother, MC, in a last ditch effort to be father of the year, decided to roast a pig for his daughter’s first birthday. Of course, there’s no way any sane mother is letting her kid near a burning pig on a spit that has been put together by a bunch of ne’er do wells with a lot of beer and a flimsy plan. So, little MC missed the best part of the pig roast but had a kickin time, nonetheless.

Unlike Uncle G., MC did not go to his local Whole Foods for the pig carcass but made a trek out to a farm outside of Hagerstown. His advice: Don’t go to Hagerstown at rush hour. Plus, a bonus for you ESers: do not go to the bathroom at the place where they butcher the pigs. Trust us, don’t do it.

Once again, you are going to need a few things before you get started. We did not actually need to procure any of these things because we had The Serb. He is MC’s friend for whom roasting large animals is a passion. He had the van, tools, and know-how to make the whole thing happen. You can certainly roast a pig without The Serb. I just don’t recommend it.

Here is the list:

Mary Had a Little Lamb. Roast.

It’s officially Fall and getting chilly. I know some families make hamburgers and hot dogs to celebrate the end of summer. We, on the other hand, put a lamb on a spit and roast the shit out of it then invite neighbors and co-workers over to get completely inappropriate, courtesy of my uncle G. In keeping with ES’ other end-of-summer post, I think this might count as food on a stick but more…I don’t know…pornographic?

I’m sure you have a lot of questions: where do you even buy a whole lamb? How long do you have to cook it for? How do you cook it? What parts of it do you eat? What parts are the best? What does it taste like? I The actual chef will reveal the secrets of the lamb after the jump…

All By Myself

As most of you know by now, I have been taking some family recipes, making sense out of them, cooking, baking and blogging the results. My grandmother, the keeper of the recipes, is away in the Poconos for the summer. She called me recently to request her recipes back so she could make “that peach shit.” She explained that she could wait on the other recipes but the peach shit is seasonal. Also, ML’s post asking what do with summer fruit reminded me of my grandmother’s solution to the fruit problem. She’s not the biggest fan unless sugar and butter are involved. All this inspired me to make the peach shit as well. Even more noteworthy, I decided to try my hand at making something by myself without my grandmother or mother there to boss and ridicule help me.

The name of the dish comes from my grandfather who was jonesing for it on a lazy summer day. He asked my grandmother, “So when are you going to make it?” “Make what?” “You know, that peach shit.” I think he thought asking for a peach crumble sounded a little lame. That or he just had no idea what it was called. Either way the name stuck. Peach shit is indeed a peach crumble which is possibly the easiest thing in the world to bake. That said, I, working alone, could almost turn it into a Friday fuck-up. The only thing that redeemed it is that it’s really hard to make peaches, sugar, and butter turn out badly. So what follows is kind of a what to do and what not to do to make some perfectly respectable peach shit.