I had just ONE job : (
Yep… one job only and being a successful caterer for over 30 years you would think hmmmm… piece of cake, right?
The Tale of the Headless Hog
My daughter and her partner of 13 years were getting married, and the ceremony took place at our lake, where we all had cabins. It started out being a small intimate family wedding, lakeside. Small weddings are foreign to our family though, most being 200 to 400 guests.
I have 25 first cousins on my mom’s side alone. They decided to expand the guest list to include some aunts and uncles and close family friends, which tripled the guest count from 30 to 90 guests. Fortunately, they have a huge new shop on their lakeside property that could accommodate this many guests for supper and a dance.
My job was to secure the whole hog which we would then roast on a rotisserie BBQ for the supper meal. Easy peasy for me, owning a big barbeque catering business back in the day. We could roast three market-weight hogs on a rotisserie, on the biggest barbeque in our business.
Ordering the whole hogs was a process that took a few years to refine. Farmers do not want to part with smaller hogs because they get more money for them at market weight. To get a smaller hog we had to pay almost twice as much money. Abatoires around the city mostly procured them as most farmers used them to slaughter animals and then cut and wrap them for the farming communities.
I needed to let them know a couple of months in advance to procure a smaller whole hog and they needed to make sure it was ‘presentable’ meaning free of hair and feet cleaned etc. Eventually, I was able to order my hogs through our city meat market. They produced all of our special recipe meat patties and a special recipe farmer sausage, that we used in our catering ‘concession business’. This was great because we needed to meet approved federally inspected meat standards, for our products.
I was doing due diligence by ordering a couple of months ahead. I wanted 120 lb whole hog for this wedding, keeping in mind we were also doing Triple-A rotisserie beef. More than enough food to feed a hungry crowd and these guests knew our high standards developed in our catering business years. (over 30 years worth before we sold it).
Fast forward three weeks to the wedding day. I called up to check on the hog and got an uneasy feeling. Two weeks in they call and ask if I will accept two small hogs… Seriously? A week in I got a call and they asked if we would accept a bigger market weight hog to which my reply was uh uh. It’s not like I didn’t give them two whole months to get this order right!
I got a call on Wednesday, two days before we are to pick up the hog, seems there is a problem and the hog is only fifty lbs. Well, this is what it is and it’s too late to do anything about it. I order some boneless pork loins to compensate for the smaller hog. Shit! The next morning I get another call and this is even worse, the whole hog is missing its head!!!!!!!! A freaking underweight headless hog… I had one job and now it is too late to make this right.
I met my daughter (bride-to-be) later that morning at RCWC to do some last-minute shopping for the meal. I am sick about the hog but not going to burden her with this knowledge. She is already stressed enough. I advise her to get the triple-A beef at Costo. She calls me from Costco and says she can’t get the cut of beef needed. OMG… the butcher there says he has been there twenty years and they have never carried whole inside rounds. This is not true and both she and I know it, but it is too late to do anything about it.
I tell her I’ll call her right back and I phone my purveyor that screwed up my whole hog order. He says he just happens to have some triple-A inside rounds in the freezer and I ask him to please get them out thawing and we will take three of them. I also up my order of pork loins because now I am getting antsy and worried about that small underweight headless hog! I call her back and say we are in luck and the person picking up the hog can also pick up the beef at the same place (I didn’t mention the boneless pork loins, but know that they’ll get loaded out as well ).
Whew… fast forward to Friday, the day before the wedding. I am still sick about the hog but we (my man-friend and I) have decided to make a styrofoam pig head for the headless hog. We seized the styrofoam from my daughter unpacking some party favours for guests at the wedding. Off we go to the Town of Shell Lake to the hardware store for some spray paint. The paint is 17.00 a can and my guy spots a plastic whole boar on a top shelf there and decides to buy it instead of making a styrohead which is fine with me.
Fast forward back to the lake and I’m there with my daughter when her friend arrives with the order from the meat market. OMG… she opens box number one with the hog inside and can’t believe it. MOM… this hog is a baby she shrieks! She picks it up with two front legs in one hand and the two back legs in the other hand and stomps over to between the house and shop to deposit it into the container she has ready to put it on ice until it goes on the BBQ in the early morning.
This picture will remain burned into my memory banks until I die … Her friend yells out “Where is its head?” My daughter stops right there in her tracks and looks over her hands to one end of the hog and then over to the other end!!!!! OH MY GOD, she never noticed it didn’t have a head! She was so upset it was a baby hog I guess…
Long story short, I cried and apologized for screwing up my one job and she forgave me and cried too, I think. At the supper next day we had plenty of meat to go around and even had some actual hog leftovers as well! The fact is, everyone had seconds and we still had so many leftovers we were hard-pressed to find room in our fridges for it all afterward.
and that is the ‘tail end’ of this story …. sorry/not sorry
This was a beautiful wedding and a beautiful day and I have the most beautiful family and I am so grateful.
copyright
August 31 st 2024