Galveston BBQ 2008

At the barber shop, I had noticed the announcement for the Galveston grand cook-off at Pier 21; the entries included wild game! Soon thereafter, Joe learned that judges for the affair can simply volunteer their taste buds without specified qualifications.

The day dawned warm and sunny with a welcome cool breeze. The grounds by the Pier were adorned with several dozens of big, black cookers under white tents filled with aproned, hefty Galvestonians bearing the insignia of their organizations. The air was thick with the smells of burning fat and bundled hay. We found the judging area and signed up for wild game. Before the time, however, we gave our charitable donation and got one Styrofoam plate each which we filled with pork rib, BBQ, deer sausage, boudin, venison and quail. Absolutely delicious, though it took up precious stomach space from what would later be needed for the judging.

At the appointed time, we walked into the judging hall where four tables were set with twelve Styrofoam containers each, numbered and “secretly” labeled for the contestants who created them. Each judge was assigned a table and instructed to taste all 12 items and select the three favorites. These three were renumbered and laid out on one table. The judges, then, tasted all twelve semifinalists and numbered them in order of preference. Our bellies were stuffed with meat and fat; an Atkins paradise. The three finalists were to be announced at 8pm during the award ceremony and before the fireworks display. We would never be able to find out which dishes won because we judged them by number while the winners were to be announced by their names.

After the judging was done, we strolled on the grounds and admired big men caressing briskets and basting wild hogs in the smoking drums. It was not possible to eat anything more, so we just looked and photographed.

Chile Lake Country 2012

Puerto Mont is a small coastal town with colorful somewhat shabby houses; there we boarded our buses and drove through lush green vegetation past Lake Lanquihne, the largest body of water in the area, on the way to Lake De los Santos, or Emerald Lake, aptly named for its turquoise-green waters. Aboard a lake boat we glided along its calm waters ringed by tall mountains; Osorno, a massive though gently sloped volcanic mountain with snow a covered cap dominated the scenery, much like a Chilean Mt. Fuji. From the lake, we ventured to the Petrohue waterfalls where several rivers converge, tumbling from the surrounding mountains creating gurgling white water rapids. It was a beautiful sunny day; the bright light made the water sparkle as it eddied and swirled. Rena found a beautiful Alpaca sweater in an unlikely little tourist shop along the trail. We ended up at the ski base near the top of Osorno where we stopped for the view and more hiking. The soil was deep red between the scraggy rocks and the view of the valley below was breathtaking. The lunch stop, in Ensinado, a popylar resort area, was memorable for the Rheas and the Alpacas grazing in the yard and the type of bad meal that you might expect to be served to a busload of tourists.

Chilean Fjords 2012

We spent the better part of a week navigating inside the fjords. There was a piercing chill in the air at the southernmost tip of Patagonia; the water had a grey-milky hue and was thick with glacier silt. Tall mountains with dabs of ice surrounded us from both sides, their peaks lost in the clouds. The silence of the landscape was only broken by the sounds of the boat and the human conversations. The Zodiacs, specially crafted rubber boats for 8-10 persons, were hoisted down into the water every morning for our outings. We had to don special light weight life vests and swipe our room key before getting on the boat. Most passengers wore their free red parkas and from a distance the boat looked like a bowl of poinsettias. Some days we used the Zodiacs to tour the glaciers, others to reach land where buses were waiting for the inland excursions.

Our first foray on the Zodiacs took us to the mouth of the Garibaldi fjord (Garibaldi enjoyed lasting fame as a South American freedom fighter before securing his place in Italian history) where two glaciers seemed to pour out into the water except that the massive rivers of turquoise blue ice stopped vertical at the edge of the mountain slopes as if cut with a giant cleaver. We rode the Zodiacs past rock formations populated with large groups of sea lions basking in the sunless sky. We spotted birds on the crags and the ice floes and marveled at narrow vertical waterfalls. When we came close to the glaciers we stared slack jawed at this wonder of natural geology taking pictures of the color and the immensity of the ice masses. Small scale calving was actively happening before our eyes, boulders of ice crashing into the water raising clouds of fine mist.

The second glacier was Pio XI (this is a Catholic country), a somewhat smaller formation that was receding. A barren beach had formed at one side, where we disembarked in a wet landing with our rubber boots. Shallow rivulets were streaming out from under the ice carrying opaque, opalescent, silty water over pebbly banks. We knelt at the mouth of a small cave with rocks and grey ice but did not venture inside. We were surprised to see a flock of birds on one of the waterfronts; they could have been in Galveston except that all the colors and the temperature were different.

We spent only one day in the open Pacific Ocean; though not as turbulent as the infamous trip around Cape Horn, the boat rolled and swayed as we waddled down the hallways and up the stairs careful to hold to the side bars. Needless to say, the dining room was almost empty the whole day. (Our appetites were undeterred.) The waves rose and crested outside our window all night while we stayed snug under the blankets; less than 24 hours later we were back inside the calm waters of the fjords and were able to take our Scopolamine patches off.

Chilean Wine Country 2012

From Valparaiso, once the most important harbor in Chile, the road to the wine country took us through hills and valleys, mountains and cultivated plains. Unlike previous visits to wineries, this time we happened upon the harvest season and ripe grapes were hanging from the vines! We made an impromptu stop at Emiliana, an organic vineyard in Casablanca valley for a brief afternoon tasting before reaching the Hotel Almacruz in Santa Cruz, a town in the middle of the Chalpagua valley, the most important grape growing region of Chile.

The hotel’s deceptively plain façade on the town square hid a tropical resort complex; rooms in the main building and individual cabanas were spacious with real queen beds and air conditioning. The interior space offered a relaxing pool, a thatch roofed palapa with bar service and gift shops. The building, though new, had a warm colonial Spanish décor and a comfortable dining room with an ambitious menu that fell short in execution. The hotel faced the town square, where the residents took their evening strolls.

Our first stop was the small Neyen vineyard, one of the oldest in the area. Our guide, a petite teacher who conducts wine tours during the summer school break, told us about the process of growing and propagating vines. This vineyard believes in stainless steel fermentation containers. Neyen’s owner is in his 80s and the winery has been sold to the large Veramonte consortium but no change may be noticed for a while because they keep the wine for five years before bottling.

L’Apostolle is a much larger enterprise owned by the Laffitte family but we visited one of their small wineries where higher grade wines are prepared. We were lucky to be there during harvest. The grapes are handpicked and then put in white plastic cartons and brought to the processing room. A team of silent local women with blue aprons and plastic gloves were sorting the grapes. We were told several times that this was specifically “women’s work” because men have neither the hands nor the patience to do it. The grapes were then dropped onto a conveyor belt for a final round of hand-sorting and sprayed with liquid nitrogen before being tossed into a large steel barrel on wheels and dropped into the wood fermentation barrels through a bottom chute. We visited the cavernous cellars, several stories deep inside solid rock where the casks are allowed to age impervious to the conditions of the ground above.

We had lunch on a beautiful terrace with a grape arbor at Viu Manent. (We passed on the wine, pacing ourselves for the day.) One dish was conger… we are still trying to figure out whether this is conger eel or a fish of some sort. Delicate white flesh something like monkfish or perhaps halibut. It must be conger eel since Neruda has written an ode to conger eel soup.

The third visit was to the Laura Hartwig vineyard; it was the smallest and least commercial outfit. The lady of the land loves horses and had a semblance of polo grounds on site. Our guide talked mostly about the process of bottling and showed us labels prepared for sales to Russia and other unexpected countries. (Laura’s visage graces the label.)

On our last day, we visited the Maipo valley location of Conche Y Toro, one of the largest wineries of the country. This is the oldest site for the company established in 1883 by don Melchor, the dynasty patriarch, and in continuous production since. No handpicked grapes here; everything mechanized and efficient except for the priciest reserves. In a small demonstration area different types of grapes were grown next to each other identified with a plaque bearing the name of the variety. We will search for these wines when we get home. A bottle of wine always tastes better when you have seen where it started out.

Chile: Coastal Towns 2012

Tortel is a most peculiar small town deep in the Chilean fjords. Everything is made of wood; all the walking paths are narrow wooden bridges like a continuous narrow boardwalk. Wooden steps lead up to the houses many of which are built on stilts perched on the steep slopes of the mountain. The houses are generally very small wooden bungalows with corrugated tin roofs and occasional small flower patches in the yard; some are painted with bright colors, others appear deserted. The town is connected to the rest of the world with one road or by water. The business of the town is lumber and tourists, though besides our group we saw little sign of either. The week of our visit even the one road had been cut off because of regional unrest and riots and the town was running out of basic supplies. In the town square music and pisco sour from a carton had been prepared for us along with a meager array of crafts for sale. The children seemed well groomed and happy though, busy with their cell phones and game apps. Despite the obvious limited resources of the people, most shacks were equipped with satellite dishes.

Castro, a picturesque town with multicolored houses and capital of Chiloe Island, is tucked deep in a calm bay protected from the turbulent sea. Mussel farms dot the waters, their colorful buoys bobbing in the gentle waves. As we drove through it, we noticed more shabby small houses, though the streets and the people appeared well groomed. We stopped at Delcahne, another small quaint town to inspect local crafts including some unusual sock-shoes with soles made of sheep wool, fur on the inside. A rickety ferry boat took us across to Quinchao Island and the town of Cichao, famous for several old churches built entirely with wood. A small music band and chorus entertained us during snacks at the local restaurant, several local pros demonstrating regional dances and encouraging willing guests to join in.

Our stop at Nembla was only notable for the opportunity to learn something about Chilean history: in the 1500s Spanish forces were temporarily repelled by an aggressive local tribe. A fort was erected in this narrow strait to protect against hostile incursions. Later in the mid 1800s Chilean patriots, mostly sons of immigrant European families claimed independence from Spain, somewhat like the American patriots who wished sovereignty from England. Once in control of the area, the new masters recognizing a severe shortage of skilled labor and taking advantage of economic conditions in Europe recruited a large number of Germans whose cultural influence is very much felt throughout this area today.

Further inland from Nembla lays Valdivia one of the older Chilean towns destroyed by earthquakes and rebuilt several times. Today it appears the most modern city we encountered in southern Chile. It has a central square with a gazebo, tall trees and landscaped enclosures with shrubs and flowers. And a McDonald’s. It also has the only open air food market we ran into. Fruit and vegetable stands line one side while fish and seafood are arrayed on the other. Piures was the most unusual seafood, a spineless orange mollusk which was included in a salty and very tasty cevichi that we bought for the equivalent of $4. The fishmongers stood behind their stalls on the edge of the river filleting fish and tossing the bones and entrails into the water where obliging sea lions scarfed them up before they even hit the water, efficient and ecologically minded garbage collectors.

buenos Aires 2012

Buenos Aires was built to resemble an elegant European city: large avenues, spacious parks and majestic buildings punctuate the landscape. La Playa de Mayor, a large central city square, spreads behind la Casa Rosada, the president’s mansion; today it is amply decorated with protest placards and large print graffiti and is surrounded by majestic buildings and a cathedral. La Boca is one of the older neighborhoods, located at the mouth of Rio de Plata; it was originally populated by Italian immigrants. The small houses of corrugated tin are brightly colored and preserve an atmosphere of quaint shoddiness. Its center of tourism is Caminito, a tiny tangle of small streets lined with open air cafes where young Portenos entertain the visitors with music and tango demonstrations.

The graceful Puente de la Mujer connects the mainland with Puerto Madero, the old harbor. It has been completely gentrified, the river walk now flanked with chic restaurants and crowded with young people kissing and families strolling. On Sundays, Plaza Dorrego, in the neighborhood of San Telmo, becomes a colorful and noisy antique market. Under white canvas tents, the locals and the tourists peruse displays of old seltzer bottles, gaucho gear, linens and all manner of collectibles. The parade of street vendors stretches down Defensa and Florida streets. We were enticed by a bola, with three wooden balls, attached to leather braids of rope, that gauchos used to herd cattle.

Other noteworthy stops:

The Teatro Colon, a palatial structure built in the early 1900s with all European materials and artisans in the grand style of continental opera houses, currently under extensive renovation but still hosting art events. The interior seven stories are lavishly gilded and decorated with large tableaus, statues, red velvet seats and stained glass.

The Recoleta Cemetary holds elaborate mausoleums, above ground shrines for the important Porteno families; it dates from the early 1800s and is still accepting new arrivals. In contrast to most well manicured tombs, there are signs of neglect and decay when the families cannot spend the resources to maintain the sites. Evita Peron, nee Duarte, lies in her family plot. Gigantic rubber trees tower over the park outside the cemetery, their overlapping roots like man-high tentacles and their tall canopies shading La Biela, another landmark café with a popular outdoor patio, where people come to watch and be seen.

We opted not to go to a glitzy tango show, but rather La Ideal, one of several dance halls where Portenos gather after work for the milonga, a ritualized tango exercise; some dancers come in pairs, others alone to pick a partner from those who also came without a partner. Unlike the staged tango performances, we found the milonga more evocative and authentic. Clearly, the tango remains organically woven into the fabric of the people.

The Café Tortoni, the oldest in the city is situated just off the Playa de Mayor and draws tourists by the busload. It evokes an atmosphere of old Vienna with stained glass ceilings and walls covered with autographed photographs of the rich and famous. We stepped in for coffee and to cool off and soak the scene after a long afternoon walk in the city.

Buenos Aires appears a prosperous city. The streets are clean (except for some unexpected sightings of loose pavement and garbage), the cars are new and well maintained, and the people are well dressed with a sprint on their step. We were surprised to see almost no black of Indian people on the streets, despite the reality than not that long ago both lived and worked in the European immigrants’ homes and plantations. No one could quite explain where they went.

We joined a tour to the Estancia de Santa Suzanna, an Argentinean dude ranch, once a working farm, now a tourist destination where we strolled through the old owners’ home quarters, we sampled hearth roasted beef, and we saw a demonstration of traditional dances and of horsemanship. The road travelled to the Estancia was as interesting as the ranch itself; we drove into the countryside for a little over an hour passing by manufacturing plants, local businesses, and small towns.

Beef reigns in the Buenos Aires food scene; skewered on huge spits next to piles of smoldering wood fires they fill the air with the aroma of burning suet and robust red meat. After drinks at the café Juanito, a tiny funky bar, we tasted the most delicious steaks and grilled molejas at La Cabrera, a small, dimly lit restaurant in the neighborhood of Palermo. Even when we attempted to vary the cuisine in seafood or Italian restaurants, we seemed to always return to at least one serving of beef. Alas, the renowned Las Cabana des Lilas in Puerto Madere disappointed.

pig roast fest: truss and verify

Ever since we acquired a place in the Adirondacks, we have dreamed of hosting festive parties under the trees with family, neighbors and friends enjoying the cool breeze from the lake with food and conversation. The centerpiece of such a bucolic scene would always be an old fashioned in-ground roasting pit with a whole lamb or pig slowly turning on the spit and wafting delicious smells as the skin turned golden crisp and the meat cooked over hours, to be sliced and consumed on the spot when the sun started its path toward sunset. Of course, there is enormous distance between fantasy and realization. We enjoyed the idea of a spit roast for several years and kept putting the making of one off every time we were at the lake for way too short a time to get our act together. We kept talking about it though and, at some point, our neighbor Sherm heard our musings and decided to beat us to it. During one visit, he proudly showed us the roasting pit he had installed in his own place with a thick layer of insulating dirt and with large tree trunks sawed in half and made into sturdy benches on which to sit and monitor the roasting. Having accomplished the process for himself, he vowed to help us build our own roasting pit any time we were ready. Sherm does not give up even when his grateful beneficiaries are wallowing in inertia and indecision. Last summer then, he announced that he had enough dirt to start creating our pit and the adventure was set in motion.

We identified a reasonably open and flat area between the house and the lake and Sherm started to offload masses of sandy dirt from his Kubota tractor until we had a pile big enough to spread a ten foot square shield between the ashes and the ground soil; this precaution is, we were informed, critical to prevent the intense heat from seeping into the small tree roots underneath and starting a ground fire. The “look” of the roasting area had already become a topic of significant discussion and contention. I was imagining a relatively structured, tame appearance with something of a wind-shielding wall made of small stones that we could pick from the lake and put up by our own hands much like Peter Mayle’s wall. Joe had a manlier view of the thing, more like a small scale Stonehenge with boulders surrounding the pit such that one could sit on and mind the roast; he had his way and started selecting massive rocks from the back of the driveway. He and Sherm undertook to maneuver the Kubota and slowly transported enough boulders to form an oval around the pit making sure that several were flat enough to sit on. Sherm also had the idea to make for us large benches from tree trunks much like he had around his pit. I was not at all sure about that style and we were able to put it off for awhile. The winter and the long snow cover served to season the pit base and make it flat and dense enough to protect the ground.

Meanwhile, we had begun to search for a suitable spit apparatus by visiting BBQ places and by searching the Internet. For almost a year we tried to figure out how to put together a motorized spit on that location without spending a fortune for an adventure that remained elusive at best. At some point we found a site that offered a long and sturdy steel spit with a motor capable of handling 50 pounds of meat and we ordered it on line and had it shipped to the lake. As we were imagining the process we thought it would be fitting to have a rustic and rugged looking frame and asked Dan the blacksmith to make one for us. He worked on it during the winter and installed it on the pit the following summer during one of my short visits. A month later, we both went up for two weeks with grand plans for an inaugural pig roast. We created a cute invitation and sent it to the people we knew on and off the lake. We had more regrets than acceptances but we were determined to try out the contraption and were undeterred. No sooner had we arrived and contacted Sherm than there he was with our other neighbor Chuck, also invited and planning to attend, and the Kubota in addition to a great big chain saw. We were reminded of the offer to make benches as soon as we reached the house because two large tree trunks had been saved from the tree-felling of the previous summer and were sitting by the side of the driveway. During one of the first days we were there, we returned home after town errands to find the trees split into huge pieces, the guys waiting for the lady of the house to instruct them where exactly to place the two benches and the massive six foot long table made out of the center section of one trunk. I really was not at all sure I liked the plan but had no tactful way to avert it. Ultimately, the furniture proved quite a-propos the rural setting and the location, naturally natural and immortally solid. The table actually quickly proved an excellent and perhaps necessary piece for handling a big, hot and slippery roasted pig.

Procuring the animal proved exceptionally difficult out in the country despite the heartwarming accounts of local farming and the inroads of the locovore movement. Already a couple of years earlier we had begun to frequent the local farmers’ market and to search the local papers and the Internet for accessible sources of local, organically grown meat. On a rare occasion we ha been able to find some piece of meat but it certainly was a great deal more elusive than what we could get our hands on in Houston. One meat guy had already told us that raising pigs was much too expensive; they ate too much and fetched too little money to make the effort worthwhile. As for lambs, they were too expensive and usually went to higher-end venues or to the members of the co-operatives. The one place that was organized enough to get foodstuffs not locally available on special order was Shaheen’s grocery store. That is, for example, where Sherm got his 50 pound bags of clams for his annual clamfests every summer. I approached the butcher, therefore, a month earlier and asked if he could get a lamb or a pig for us. No luck on the lamb; he could not think of any available source. As for the pig, there was one possibility: order it frozen from North Carolina and thaw it for us in his cold room. The animals were as a rule closer to 100 pounds than fifty but he could promise something under 50 pounds; we had bought a spit fit to handle that weight and no other choice so I told him to go ahead and order us a frozen pig under 50 pounds. True to his reputation, and without accepting a down payment, he ordered the beast. Our first stop in Tupper Lake was to the grocery store to purchase eating supplies and to inspect the pig. With a measuring tape we ascertained that this 49 pound carcass would fit the length of our spit and went back on line to refresh ourselves with the technologies of mounting a pig on a spit, trussing, basting, determining cooking time, needed inner temperature etc.

On the party weekend, we welcomed Marj and Isaac who drove up from New York late Friday night and went to collect the pig from the grocery store. We reviewed the mounting and trussing instructions and purchased metal string since we did not have and had not been able to find a trussing needle in the local stores. We calculated the cooking time and added an hour to be safe and started the process after the morning coffee. We pulled the pig out of its box and installed it on the solid table that Sherm had made for us. Then we started the arduous process of fitting in on the spit and trussing it with the metal string. It is critical, apparently, to approximate the spine as closely as ossible with spit and to bind the legs tightly in order to create a cylindrical mass to facilitate the torque on the motor. A few prior successful roasts in Houston had given us unearned confidence that quickly gave way to frustration. Piercing the skin was extremelydifficult. Once we had a sharp knife slit on it, the slender metal wire was unwilling to go through. We spent an hour approximating the spine to the spit and semi-securing the ends with the metal prongs. Once we had it, we discovered that the motor side of the spit was too far out to fit the motor. There then ensued a ridiculous battle to slide the pig to the correct position on the spit, by the end of which the metal wire had broken and the spit was hanging at the bottom of the abdominal cavity, the spine too many inches away from it, and Shem had arrived unable to stay away from what he correctly assumed would be our fruitless efforts. He left for his home and returned with thick wire and pliers and strong metal needles and we re-trussed for another hour. He also re-fashioned the motor bracket and the motor finally fit onto the spit. The next disappointment was that the motor was not strong enough to turn the pig and a potentially moving piece of the spit apparatus began to uncoil as the motor tried to turn. Rather than risk having the pig fall off onto the fire, we decided that pigs had been successfully roasted with manual turning and got a thick pair of garden gloves and proceeded to quarter-turn the pig by hand every 15-20 minutes.

The next fiasco was the fire itself. We have successfully cooked all manners of food in all kinds of settings for decades and have a healthy confidence about charcoal. Chuck our neighbor insisted that we needed to roast the pig with firewood so vehemently that it became almost a dare to succeed with charcoal. In addition to being unfamiliar with the heat and speed of a wood fire we were also concerned that it raises more flame than charcoal and were afraid of loose sparks onto the grass especially during a day when the oppressive heat was increasingly being eased by a gusty breeze from the lake. And that turned out to be the real problem. No sooner the heat rose from the blistering hot charcoal bed above the metal frame of the roaster, it was deflected away from the meat above it by the constant gusty wind which created a cool insulating sheet of air between the fire and the meat. We probably used twice the prescribed amount of charcoal and the bottom of the roasting platform was as hot as any we have created in prior endeavors. Yet, hour after hour we stuck the thermometer into different parts of the pig and the temperature refused to budge above one hundred degrees, one hundred and fifteen at the most. Enter Chuck, vindicated and ever helpful: all we had to do was ask for his help, he said and went to work amassing piles of fire wood and stacking it over the coals. Soon we had a blazing fire such that would warm anyone’s heart and feet on a freezing winter night. I was again afraid of loose sparks and had the hose on standby; the flames lapped and roared inside the metal pan but the wind kept them from making contact with the meat just the same. The guests arrived, they gathered around the fire and admired our fortitude and spirit of adventure and eventually lost interest and gathered on the porch near the beer and the snacks and started munching as we turned the pig and checked the temperature and watched the clock advance and the sun lower itself in the west. At eight o’clock we declared the war over and took the pig off the fire.

Here is where Sherm’s table proved its mettle and made a believer of me. The tabletop was as solid as the hemlock it came from and held the pig steady for the removal of the wires and the prongs. It held the pig steady for the hammering that was required to start separating the joints and the head. I sliced it superficially like a loaf of gyro and took off peels of crackling skin and warm, properly cooked slivers of meat and plated enough for the guests to finally experience the luscious food we had promised. When I reached pink flesh I stopped. Before the evening was over, we hacked the pig in a few manageable pieces and transferred it inside wrapped in large plastic garbage bags which we stuffed in the refrigerator. The bulk was made lighter because Aidan, the Sayles’ grandson had expressed the wish to take the eyes to his home for dissection and seeing the amount of stuff on the table and the degree of rawness of the head, I offered that he could take the whole head and his eyes sparkled and he said that would be great! So before the party was over, Joe took cleaver and hammer, he cut the head off and stuffed it in another plastic garbage bag which Aidan proudly slung over his shoulder before leaving for his home. After the guests left, we started collecting all residuals that could be of interest to a bear as a black sheet spread over the sky and thunder rumblings competed with the loons. We made a mad dash to the dock and brought the John boat out of the water in the lick of time before a torrential rain came along and took care of the smoldering embers.

The next day, after Marj and Isaac left we put the pig in the oven in two batches and cooked if for several more hours before it reached an FDA acceptable temperature. We had delicious bits and pieces for breakfast and lunch and snacks and allotted portions to take to Houston and to leave behind for our next visit. Luck eluded us again, however, and on Saturday morning, the day before our departure the freezer melted and we had to hurry the still frozen containers to safety in Sherm’s freezer. The problem corrected itself for some unexplained reason but it was too late to retrieve the leftovers; maybe there will be something for us in October, maybe Sherm and his family will have enjoyed every last bite. This undertaking proved a real battle and / but taught us quite a lot about our set-up. For the next trip, this fall we will purchase and whip ahead good trussing needles, trussing twine and sturdy kebab skewers. We also plan to carry frozen lamb or goat from Houston and have another practice run of the bucolic in-the-ground-spit roasting so we can refine both technique and equipment for future celebrations.

Enjoying a roast has proved much harder in the country than in our Houston backyard contrary to our expectation. When we first started putting together the makings of the lake pit, we mentioned our exploits to Marcelo and Staci Vela who brought to our attention the technology of the Caja China. After reviewing the on-line information we purchased it, assembled it and have used it on two delightful occasions. It is a very backyard-friendly process with reliable cooking times and outcomes and it will be the subject of a separate account. Of course, it lacks the visual drama of the open air in-the ground roasting, the smells, the sizzle and the opportunity to sit around the fire watching the meat slowly turn to ambrosia.