Digging for Chicken and Pork

Willie & Justine (Bill's kids) visited us last weekend. To celebrate, we thought we'd cook a few chickens, some potatoes and carrots (our carrots!) and two pork loins. A lot more food than nine people could eat, but what the hell, we were happy!

To challenge ourselves we decided to cook the food in a pit. Bill chose a spot near the house site where the earth had already been disturbed. He spen5 Friday afternoon digging and started the fire on Saturday morning. We seasoned the food and wrapped it in burlap. We put a big piece of corrugated metal on top of the hot coals, then the chickens, pork and veggies, then buried it all in couple of feet of dirt.

4 hours passed. We dug up the burlap packages. The pork was perfect. The potatoes were almost ready. Everything else was close to raw. And there is no way to stick it back in that particular over for awhile longer. So into the regular oven it went. Whetting our appetites with pork, tomatoes and white wine, we waited about an hour and a half for the second course. We finished up with Barb Armstrong's peanut butter cake with chocalate frosting.

An experiment. A cooking project gone wrong.

Trouble is we liked the doing. As a cooking method it feels earthy. We'd like to do it again. But we're just not sure what we did wrong. Anybody have any thoughts?

Meanwhile, it has been hot. The garden is languishing. We do have as many tomatoes as we can eat, a couple of healthy looking cantaloupes and some carrots. But everything else seems stopped in its tracks.

PHOTO: The Undone Chicken

















PHOTO: Willie Digging for Food