This little piggy.......

Over the Delaware River and through the woods
To Jeannie's Egg Hunt with Brunch we went.

On the road we met three little piggies leaving home for the market.
We stopped to warn them that we thought we saw a BIG BAD wolf not far behind.

"Oh my," said the littlest piggy, "I knew I should have stayed home."
"Oh my," said the middle little piggy, "I wish I didn't have a craving for roast beef".
"Oh my", said the biggest little piggy...."we better get the wee, wee, weeeee off the way home".

We offered them a lift but they were going in the opposite direction.

OK, guys here's our GPS location if you need us.....and we continued on.

Well, those little piggies busted a move but soon found themselves lost in the woods.
"We need help," cried the littlest piggy. "Turn on your phone big brother, let's find that house."
They could see the wolf gaining on them but the brick house was right up ahead.

"Let's split up to confuse the wolf".
The big brother piggy, aka; Goldie Locks (yes, he's a WWF wrestler)  sees three bears and runs to them. No wolf would dare mess with him now.
The middle piggy saw little red riding hood and ran under her cape. "Whew, safe here".
The littlest piggy managed to climb on the roof only to fall down the chimney....

Imagine our surprise when we got to Jeannie's house and found this little piggy on the menu.

"We thought Mary was bringing the lamb?"
"Let me tell you.......seems the funniest thing happened when I got home from the market....."

THE END


Seriously, guys, I roasted a suckling pig for Easter.
I asked the butcher to remove the head. You just never know how people will react to a butchered animal with the head still on. I know I was giving up the best skin and meat (the cheeks) on the pig but next time I will roast the whole pig, head and all.

Not much prep is needed. I place 8 coins of fresh ginger, a handful of fresh thyme sprigs, 3-4 stems of rosemary and sea salt into the cavity.
DONE

No need to do anything to the skin. This little piggy was about 14 pounds (I took off 2lbs for the head), the perfect amount for 12 people (we had three little piggies at the table so I have lots of leftover perfectly roasted pork).

 

My SIL has a very small oven and we were thinking Weber but her Weber was a small one one and there was no way it was going to fit, so I took a large aluminum pan and improvised. 

You can see how snug he was (yes, we named him Iggy the Piggy). Due to the fact that he was all scrunched up the heat was not cooking it evenly so after the first 90 minutes I flipped him over.
It was quite apparent after another 90 minutes, he would have to come out of that oven or we weren't eating dinner till midnight. I cut him like I would a chicken and put the legs in one pan and the chest with the ribs into another pan, covered them tightly with foil and put them on the grill for another 90 minutes.

Perfection, finally. We could eat.
My SIL got the ribs and I opted for the meat down the back bone (yummy good) and The Nudge took a Boston Butt.

We had four sauces to test and we were each enamored with a different sauce, so it really worked out well. I roasted a tray of potatoes in some of the pig fat with olive oil and only salt & pepper and they were excellent. True baby carrots rounded out the vegetable end and dinner was a smash.

Even after all the maneuvering, it wasn't all that laborious a task. Next year I will grill it home on my larger Weber and finish it off my SIL's house, and we all agreed, there will be a next time.