This past saturday was the luau at Brian's house. Probably something like 80 people showed up and it was really fun! (and tiring) The pig turned out pretty good, but unfortunetely there was no easy way to serve it so that not as much of it would have gone to waste.
We started the preperations for the event on the tuesday before, where we started digging a 4 foot deep pit in the backyard. Playing basketball and "pig" and "horse" didn't exactly help our progress, but we managed to get the pit to be about 2 feet deep that night. EJ mixed us drinks while we worked on the pit. May helped out also especially as the measuring stick :P Since we knew she's about 5 feet tall, we just tell her to stand in the pit to get a rough idea how much more we have to dig.
Some of the others came back to do more wednesday night, but I wasn't there. On friday, after work, we all rushed over to dig the pit, unload the rocks from the car, make some dinner, prep the pig with onions, garlic, salt, pepper, orange juice, red wine, and apples. Brian got drunk fairly early on so he nearly fell into the pit while it was on fire, not to mention falling on various other things. The fire took a while to die down so we couldn't get the pig until around 12:30 at night. The fan, a light, and a tiki torch fell in sometime too. :P Jason was twirling the flaming tiki torch around trying to put it out before it just broke apart. Yanting and EJ did a great job with the food stuff. It was about 4am by the time we decided that we covered the pit well enough to fall asleep. Pretty much all of us who helped stayed over that night.
On saturday, there were a lot of people. The Leland people, the Berkeley people, the Saratoga people, the IBM people, the church people, etc. Lots and lots of people. Kinson, Tanya, and I cooked almost all the meat on three grills. Too bad a lot of it was eaten before we could get to it. Kinson later did the last of the chicken and somebody did the ribs which we sorta forgot to bring out in the beginning. We took the pig out at around 3pm, I think. It took a lot of work cuz the dirt was all clumpy, kinda hard and stuck together, really heavy, and of course hot. With the help of some of the guests, we got it carried over to the table at which point, in true Lord of the Flies style, our horde picked apart the pig.
From then on, things were starting to get a little fuzzier in my head cuz I had a decent amount to drink. Some of us were taking turns taking care of Brian who was pretty much drunk before dark, and Eric who I think lasted maybe a half hour longer. I'm surprised I was relatively functional despite having around 4-5 shots of vodka, 2-3 beers, not that much food, and 3.5 hours of sleep.
Oh, while cleaning at noon on sunday, we were going to relight the fire to burn some stuff. After putting in the lighter fluid, Kinson was about to strike a match when all of a sudden the pit lit up by itself. Okay, it doesn't sound as cool when I type it out but whatever.
Things to note for next time:
- Particle board sucks ass for covering the pit.
- We need somebody who's got good knife skills (and not drunk by the time we need them) to serve up the pig so it's perhaps not as wasteful
- Wood takes forever to burn. Forever being something beyond 4 hours.
- Tarp tears easily with lots of dirt on it.
- Burning the remains is a bad idea.
- A 4 foot deep pit takes several days.
- Must put paper, then coals, then wood, then rocks in that order from bottom to top. Must also use lighter fluid as well as thicker oils down there to keep the flames up long enough to get everything burning. Oh, yeah, and a small fan too.
- Pole digger. 'Nuf said.
- A canopy is a very nice thing to have on a hot day.
- You're not likely to come out even on the money.
- If Brian says "I didn't buy it cuz this was cheaper," slap him.
I'll post a link to pictures as soon as I get them.
Posted by hachu at August 29, 2005 08:00 PM