lechon, or go home

October 31, 2010

I’d like to start by stating I never thought I’d have plans to go to the beach on Halloween. That being said, here is how else I never thought I’d be celebrating Halloween.

We roasted a pig, and by we I mean mostly my cluster mate. I watched and took pictures (nothing too gory, despite the holiday). I’ll try not to be too terribly graphic.

His family woke up early and bought the pig. The plan was for us all to go together, but it was determined that a handful of Americans would make it next to impossible to get a good price on a pig. Which worked out well, because I did not want to go to the market at 3:00.

Around 1:00 we gathered to watch. First he hog-tied it, and boy did it scream. Then he slapped it on the table, shoved the knife in, dug around and threw it on the stick. Well… not quite but basically. He did throw it on the table, and he did shove the knife in its throat, but then it was quite a process to get it to the bamboo pole.

Luckily I don’t know much of the details about the actual slaughter of the pig, because he himself didn’t much know what he was doing. He probably knows more Waray then the guy knows English, so he was just kind of hoping he does the right thing.

So he put the knife in his throat, and it squealed some more (but not as much as I thought) and it bled some (again not as much as I thought). Then they let it twitch while the water boiled. The water was poured on the pig and then he took off the hair and outer layer of skin. Then he took a razor and shaved off the longer hairs, popped off the hoof casings (toenails) and rinsed it off.

After it was clean he cut it open and began to disembowel it. Bladder first. Then the rest all together. This was the coolest part. He pulled and pulled and removed and removed. They saved that part. When that was all removed they went for the repertory system. Then they rinsed out the middle. This is where all the blood came into play, but really there wasn’t that much.

Then he… well there is no poetic way to say this, but he shoved the stick up its butt, through its insides and then through quite a bit of work right out the mouth. Once on the stick they hammered it on and stuffed it with garlic, onions and other delish goodies. He sewed that thing up, rubbed it down with some Coke and set himself up to spin that thing for 2 hours.

We went home and made our salsa and left him to rotisserie our dinner. Luckily it was raining and so he didn’t have to sit in the heat. However the pigskin was not as crispy as it would have been sans rain. When the pig was done we got into our costumes and went to the party.

One of the best Halloweens ever, and it wasn’t even Halloween yet. We’ve got the beach on the schedule for today and this afternoon are going to try to catch Rocky Horror Glee Show.