Say, how fat IS Wilbur these days?

(Warning: Vegitarians, vegans, and fans of E.B. White had best avoid this post.)

John Scalzi has some thoughts on the fine tradition of pig-roasting. This is exactly what it sounds like: when you roast an entire pig, head and all. John's description of the event is eerily accurate, right down to the fact that in any rural county there are at most five guys who are known far-and-wide for their abilities to roast an entire piggy.

I've only been fortunate enough to attend one pig-roast in my life, and sadly, the roasting of the pig wasn't even done on the premises. The event was hosted at a favorite restaurant (the proprietors of which provided the food at our wedding), but the pig was cooked someplace down the street and then brought in a pickup truck to the restaurant when done. Still, it was damned impressive, even if they covered the head in foil so as to not gross out the more indelicate in the bunch. (I, of course, requested a peek, and it was exactly as I expected: just a bigger version of the roasted pigs my wife and I saw in the windows of Chinatowns in Boston and Toronto.)

Anyhow, pig-roast weekend was a lot of fun for us, and it's a pretty fond memory of our pre-daughter lives, and a bit infamous as well, because three out of four nights that weekend (starting Thursday), my parents drank my wife and I under the table. (I seem to recall crying out into the Cosmos at one point, "Evil, I have met thee, and thy name is 'Draft Beer'!") And you can have all the pork tenderloin and pork ribs and pork chops and pork steaks you want, but somehow there's nothing quite like eating those same cuts of meat when they've been cut from the flesh of the entire animal once he's done roasting.