Piggy and Me

After Elly was born, Cori took a "Mommy and Me" class at the hospital, where she became friends with a group of women who all had babies around the same time. Over the past year, we (mommies, babies AND the dads) have gathered every few months for reunions. The most recent was this past Saturday, when we met at our church. Now that the kids are getting more mobile, we figured we'd need a bit more space than someone's living room, and the activity room at the school seemed like a great place. We met at lunchtime, and I voluneetered to provide the main course; everyone else brought sides/drinks/dessert. I had been waiting for another excuse to make pulled pork.



Pulled pork takes a long time...overnight, and makes a LOT of meat, so I don't make it very often. But I LOVE it, so I find reasons to make it. This time, I decided to do two small roasts, rather than one big pork shoulder. One butt (that's right, pork butt is SHOULDER, not pig heiny) I prepared with a traditional BBQ rub. I like the rubs made by Dizzy Pig, this one was Dizzy Dust, their all-purpose BBQ rub. The second butt I marinated in a jerk marinade overnight. I've used jerk marinade on grilled dishes before (chicken, fish, pork), but never on a low 'n slow smoke.

Friday night, I prepared the Egg for a low temperature cook, and the butts went on at about 9:30 pm...


...and here's what they looked like 14 hours later. Notice how much they shrink during the cooking process.


Meat in the morning light:


The butt prepared with Dizzy Dust came out great, as always. The jerked pork was also good, but didn't taste much like jerk. The long cooking process and the smoke seemed to kill most of the flavors I love from the jerk marinade (the herbs, the allspice and other spices, the heat from the habanero peppers). It tasted good, but wasn't really what I was hoping for. I think I'll stick to grilling jerked pork, and leave the smoking to the dry rubs.

We had a great time with the Mommy and Me group. I don't really feel comfortable posting photos of other people's kids to the internet, but here's one of Elly having fun on the preschool equipment.