Pig Roast & Luau

This year on August first, the members of the Prufrock House eating group rekindled an old tradition and put on a pig roast for the Caltech community. This page documents much of the preparation of this event and currently is a little thin on actual party shots because the battery in the digital camera which covered much of the festivities ran out during the party. But never fear! Many conventional pictures were taken and those'll be popped on the web sometime.

To prepare for the pig roast, the Prufrock members and some friends (Jen and Keith from Physics) dug a pit in the backyard and roasted a turkey a few days before, much of which is documented here. For the curious, the posters advertising the pig roast can be found here.

These pictures were taken with an el-cheapo $99 digital camera and look the part, but they're certainly good enough to give you the gist of what happened. If you want better pix, then send me some $$ and I'll buy a better one and document this year's Halloween party and next summer's pig roast!

Enough with the chatter, on with the show!

The timing of the steps involved in cooking a pig underground are relatively well-known. We burned the fire in the pit beforehand for 5 hours and then cooked the pig underground for about 11 hours. You can do the math: the party started at 6pm, so we had to have everything ready to light the fire at about 2am that morning. Hence the darkness outside. Actually, it's about 10:30 the night before, and this is a shot of the bricks and rocks that will be used to cook the pig.

Here, Tina and Glenn are stacking the sides and the bottom of the pit with bricks and cinder blocks, which will trap the heat in. This is preferable to letting all the heat out and cooking our grass from the roots up. Pigs taste better than grass.

The finished oven. Now let's put some flammable stuff in it!

Here's the oven partially filled with wood and kindling. The pole in the center with the burlap wrapped around it was used to light the fire. More on that soon...

Here, Glenn uses his mighty Canadian muscles to senselessly chop some defenseless free-range pallets to bits, for use as kindling.

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last updated: September 17, 2003

	The timing of the steps involved in cooking a pig underground are relatively well-known. We burned the fire in the pit beforehand for 5 hours and then cooked the pig underground for about 11 hours. You can do the math: the party started at 6pm, so we had to have everything ready to light the fire at about 2am that morning. Hence the darkness outside. Actually, it's about 10:30 the night before, and this is a shot of the bricks and rocks that will be used to cook the pig.
Here, Tina and Glenn are stacking the sides and the bottom of the pit with bricks and cinder blocks, which will trap the heat in. This is preferable to letting all the heat out and cooking our grass from the roots up. Pigs taste better than grass.
	The finished oven. Now let's put some flammable stuff in it!
Here's the oven partially filled with wood and kindling. The pole in the center with the burlap wrapped around it was used to light the fire. More on that soon...
	Here, Glenn uses his mighty Canadian muscles to senselessly chop some defenseless free-range pallets to bits, for use as kindling.