This blog needs a "slaughtering and butchering things" tag.

I am not a big birthday celebrator. Or rather, I tend not to celebrate my own birthdays. I love to gather people and food and cake for other people's big days, but my own birthdays have been fairly quiet, tame affairs since I burned out on hosting my own large birthday parties at the ripe old age of 12. And that was back when my parents were doing all of the actual work.

But I'm no birthday hater. Rather, I consider birthdays a lovely excuse to take some time and do absolutely ridiculous things with it.

For instance, on my birthday this year I went kayaking!

 

 

And went out to dinner at the always-phenomenal Bay Wolf!

And in between I slaughtered a rooster!  

Which was all pretty amazing. And I would have been completely satisfied with all that, and spent the next month bragging about it all. But here's the thing about having friends who share your amazement at the same weird shit: they don't need much encouragement to buy you an expensive ticket to a pig butchering event for your birthday, because it means that they have an excuse to go too. And that's why birthdays and my dear friend Robyn are awesome, and also how we ended up at an event entitled "Meat Locker" at a bar named Bloodhound, where the main feature was the dismantling of an entire pig. 

Oh yes.

As soon as we walked in, we were handed pork sticks. How could you not love it?

And with a bar hosting, there were also some interesting drinks being served up. This friendly fellow is making us a "Kentucky Breakfast," featuring bacon-infused bourbon (the bacon was, sadly, not evident), maple syrup, lemon, and egg whites. The lemon was the distinguishing flavor, which made me a fan! 

The "Smoke Em if ya Hallam" did not go down so easily, and featured bourbon, maraschino liqueur, carpano antica formula, and fernet branca. I don't know what those last two things are, but I didn't get another one.

Actually, two bourbon drinks was enough for the rest of the evening. Apologies to those who happened to talk to me after the second drink and were greeted with an enthusiastic monologue on pork that made no sense.

The people who I talked to at the event, though, they knew what I was talking about. It was so cool to be in a room surrounded by people who talk food as much as I do, or actually, even more. And not just any food, but pork food. And all these people were so friendly and so excited and so lovely! Yay people!

The pig was dissected by a fellow named Taylor Boetticher, of his own Fatted Calf Charcuterie. And it was really fun to watch - I can't even cut up a chicken very neatly, and this fellow was just tearing this pig up into beautiful pieces, occasionally with a saw.

I sort of really want a meat saw.

And then it went outside to the grill, which, after a couple of strong drinks and a lot of little pork bites, is where we went too. Standing next to a hot grill on one of SF's hottest days of the summer was more pleasant than the hot, sweaty room inside.

And at the grill we met a wonderful, wonderful man who talked to me for ages about how to roast a pig and was so incredibly encouraging. Sante Salvoni, Master Food Guru, kept apologizing for not knowing any good websites or books for my pig roasting project, all the while giving me all sorts of advice and information that would have been impossible to find on the internet - like showing me how hot the coals ought to be at pig-level.

I, of course, took notes. They are the notes of an insane illiterate who's had a little too much to drink.










He gave me tips on charcoal, which I wrote down.

He recommended I baste the pig with lemon, or at least I assume that's what that note means. The lemon is clearly important. 

At some point in the conversation, he mentioned a friend of his who plays drums, possibly in Philadelphia. I wrote that down too.

And then I got distracted by these amazing bacon shortbread cookies (seriously, so good) and, obviously afraid that I would forget the very complicated, involved bacon-to-butter ratio that makes them different from your average shortbread cookie, I wrote that down too. With lots of exclamation marks.

In my defense, they were AMAZING. I ate them before I could get a photograph. They looked like shortbread cookies, but with more bacon.

Anyway, I got to eat pork on a stick, pork in a bun, and pork under sauce; got to drink bourbon with pork and lemon, and bourbon with rat poison; got to talk to several pork lovers and a couple of pork gurus; and had great many opportunities to photograph a pig's severed head. What more could a girl ask for?

Happy birthday to me!