The Great Porkapalooza

After the Fourth of July pig roast, my wonderful husband and his neighbor friends went to the Boundary Waters for their annual canoe trip.  Perhaps they spent too much time in the sun because they came back with a hair brained idea to roast an even bigger pig.  This time they wanted to make things more complicated by injecting the pig with several different ethnic seasonings  from various countries around the world.  They hatched big plans about giving all the guests “PassPorks” that could be stamped when eating a food from each country’s table.   At least 3 stamps would be required before visiting the dessert table.  They had decided live entertainment would be in order.

When I first heard about these notions, I just completely dismissed it.  There is no way, I thought, that my friend up the hill would agree to another big party in her yard so soon after the fourth of July.

Then when we got back from camping at Temperance River, there was an emergency planning meeting for all the dads.  It seemed the party was a go:  ten days away.  They needed to order a pig, so they went out to eat to figure that all out.  From then on it was a planning frenzy.  There were meetings.  Discussions.  Lots of excuses for the dads to drink their favorite adult beverages.  The party was morphing into quite an affair.  The Monday before the party all of us sat down at an outdoor table in the yard of the neighbors up the hill and spent an afternoon munching on yummy food while figuring out the details:  the time table for roasting the enormous pig, the dividing up of shopping for other food we needed to get, who would make the passporks, who would find the stamps, who would get 106 ears of corn, when would we dig the pit for the pig?  The big question was:  what could we do to entertain hordes of children that would allow us not to be the ones entertaining hordes of children?  We considered a bouncy house, but dismissed that idea because of expense.  Instead, plans were made to create a bean bag toss in the shape of a pig that had fog escaping from its nose, and also we ordered pig shaped pinatas.

On Wednesday our neighbor halfway down the street redug the roasting pit in his back yard.  On Thursday we had a corn husking party.  A troop of kids can husk 106 ears of corn in no time flat.  Discussions were held about how to create the best kind of seasonings for the pig.  Shopping was done to procure additional supplies for the party.

Friday was spent hauling things up to our neighbor’s yard and setting everything up.  I baked 80 pig shaped sugar cookies and a quadruple recipe of corn bread, and printed the passporks.  Then it was party time!

Here are what some of the food tables looked like before people started bringing food.  There was also a very large American Southern BBQ table.

Dr. Peds ordered 18 fresh young coconuts, which he opened with his special coconut opening tool to make guests a special drink upon arrival.  People had passporks in hand and were walking around with coconuts with straws and little umbrellas sticking out of them.

The umbrellas were a big hit with the kids, who were busy devouring tanks of lemonade.  Literally, tanks.

Our friends were back from spending the first part of summer with family in Singapore and Malaysia!  We were so excited they could come to the party.

Soon it was time to dig up the pig.  Almost everyone who had arrived at the party at this point marched down the hill to the pig pit.  Many brought their coconuts along.  A crowd assembled to watch the pig (earlier in the day named Daisy) lifted from his sweltering grave.  (A few new kid- vegetarians may have been created in the process.  Our own  resident vegetarian, a relaxed and nonjudgmental Banana, elected to just skip this part of the party.)  

Soon we were off, marching the pig up the hill in the second pig processional of the summer.  I should have brought my trumpet to play a fanfare.  

The pig was disassembled and parts underwent an additional seasoning before placement on each ethnic table.  

The feast was on.  There was so, so much food.  Truly it was a feast of epic proportions.

The kids ran around and played on the playset in our neighbor’s yard.  There was a bubble machine for the wee people to run through.  YaYa pushed kids in the tree swing for hours.  There was a constant long line of kids waiting to have a ride in the swing and she was utterly exhausted by the end.

YaYa was given the task of making the bean bag toss.  The dads never did quite figure out how to attach the fog machine to the pig’s nostrils, but nevertheless, the bean bag toss was a lot of fun.  YaYa searched the internet for some pictures of pigs, and came across this design for “Friends not Food” from some kind of a vegan activist site.  She freehandedly outlined it and then painted the pig. We all thought it was perfect.  

Live entertainment!  The music was great, and the perfect style for a beautiful summer night.  Really, the weather was amazing.  It was such a beautiful evening, and in this picture you can kind of see the big tanker boat down on the lake that came through just before sunset.  It was magical.  

Here’s one of my very favorite toddlers!  

Piñata time!  All the kids lined up.  They were blindfolded and handed a broomstick, and much hilarity ensued.  We went through quite a few kids before the piñata broke.  

To entertain the masses waiting for a turn at the piñata, watermelon was offered on a side table.  An entire melon was devoured in mere minutes. 

Contact was made, and out fell . . . . . . . TOOTHPASTE!  We had so much fun filling a pig piñata with 144 mini tubes of toothpaste.  Seriously, it was brilliant!  The fact that toothpaste was falling out of the piñata did not stop a mass of children running underneath it and gleefully grabbing fistfuls of toothpaste. They were jumping and screaming like it was the best prize in the world.  No tubes of toothpaste were left unclaimed, and kids were spotted running back to their parents yelling, “Toothpaste!  I got toothpaste!”  One kid even jumped up and down next to his mom shouting happily, “It’s better than nothing!”  It was a riot!

A second piñata was also broken.  That one did have candy, which was also claimed in a frenzy.  People stayed until it was so dark no one could really see anymore.  It was quite the party.  I’m always a bit awkward at parties, wandering aimlessly and never knowing what to do with myself, but even taking that into consideration, this was a great summer evening.  In addition, consuming the leftovers from the party has given those of us throwing the party more excuses to get together.