If only I had a video of Jeff—our Sous Chef—and me at 2 am!
We left Zinc after the Saturday night dinner service shift (1pm-12am) and drove to the farm. There we were…all alone, wandering the grounds, me behind the wheel of Jeff’s brother’s 150 Ford pick-up truck, searching in and out of the horse barns, for the 100+ pound pig that we were roasting for the event.

Each year we’re asked to roast a pig raised by a Connecticut farmer. Normally, the farmer arrives at Zinc a day or two before the event and hand delivers his prize pig. Not this year—instead the pig was delivered directly to the farm…and it wasn’t the normal 100 pounds. We were given a 160-pound pig to roast!

But first things first,we had to find the pig. With me behind the wheel, I sent Jeff out into the pitch-black barns with the truck’s headlights beaming into the barns as the only source of light. We finally find the barn where our prize is stored, the whole time waiting for one of the infamous horror film characters (like Chucky or Jason) to pop out with a chain saw. Next we had to try to heave this 160 lb pig into the back of the truck! We had to make some minor alterations to fit the pig into our special roasting box, which I will leave to the imagination.

It is now close to 3:30am and we need to get this pig on the coals in order for it to be ready for the sold-out event. Jeff starts to light the coal and I see that the grass is on fire as well. (Did I mention that we had come from a long Saturday night shift at Zinc?) Once we got the pig on the fire, we set up our little sleeping chalet with my dogs’ Max and Abbey’s foam beds and lots of fleece blankets.

We tried to get some sleep under the stars—but there were none, just a lightening storm looming in the distant sky. At this point, one of the event organizers shows up at our “campsite” to apologize for sleeping through our arrival—he was the person who was supposed to direct us to our pig! He left and we tried to sleep. But this is clearly not going to happen for me—one of the other participants arrived to set up their booth and is shouting, swearing and making quite a racket. 10 minutes after Jeff told that he wasn’t tired he was out cold…and snoring…loudly. I decided the only thing left for me was to turn to my IPOD to block out the noise. Even at the highest setting The Beatles cannot help.

At about 6 am (after very little sleep) we began to cook our eggs and bacon on the open coals. It was a delicious breakfast—probably the smoothest part of the day. We had 12 more hours to go: finish the pig, set up the booth and serve the guests waiting to taste some to the finest roasted pork ever. While the event is always fun and the setup is an adventure…as usual, we were glad to be part of it all.