2011: The First Half

Since Facebook came about, I've been really, really remiss in updating my blog.  So in an effort to remedy that in one swell poop, here's 2011 so far, and hopefully, there will be more frequent posts as the year goes on.

January.

Pretty much nothing happened.  Nothing I have any decent pictures of, anyway.  It was dark, cold, and the weather was probably foul.

February

I (Dave) went back to England for the third time in a year, spending an entire month of the last 12 outside the country.  Sure it's for work, but it's always fun too.

Parliament, AKA "Big Ben"

Terry and I among a huge crowd of people in London's Chinatown during the Chinese New Year celebration

Icebar, with Margaret, Jane, and Terry

Parliament and the River Thames, in fake tilt-shift, as seen from the London Eye

 March.

Jennifer and the kids went out to Albuquerque for Spring Break to see Uncle Jared, Aunt Julia, and Cousin Zane.

April
Zoe ran in the Dogwood 5K, yet again.

May

While Tristan was on tour with the North Carolina Boys Choir, the rest of us went to the beach at Emerald Isle and Salter Path.

We got to catch Tristan's NCBC concert at First Baptist Church in New Bern.

Zoe's award-wining Gator Show Choir performed their Spring Concert

And, of course, no May would be complete without our annual Pig Pickin'!

June . . . so far.

Tristan and the North Carolina Boys Choir, Concert Choir, Chamber Choir, Training Choir and the brand new Girls Choir perform their annual spring concert at Duke Chapel

Zoe graduates from Fifth Grade, and heads to Middle School

And so the summer begins.  We're all headed to Georgia for a few days, Tristan heads out on his second national tour with NCBC, singing in Virginia, Washington DC, NYC and New Jersey while Jennifer and Zoe are in Pennsylvania.  We're all going to Andy and Shelley's for Independence Day and then in July we're headed to California.  We'll wrap up the summer with a trip to Huron, Ohio and Cedar Point with the Southside Swingers Club, plus there will probably be a few beach weekends between now and October.

Stay tuned, more travel, pictures, and words to follow.

2010 in Pictures and Words

If you got a Christmas Card from us, it looked like this.  If not, well, here you go.

So here we go, 2010, in summary

January.

It snowed.  A lot (for Mebane).  Eight inches in one storm was the most snow we'd seen since 2002, and we tried to make the most of it, despite not really having much on the way of snow toys.

February

Zoe turned 10 (not pictured)

March

Dave spent two weeks in England for work (also not pictured)

April

We spent Easter weekend down at the beach on Oak Island.  It should've been a little too cold for the kids to swim, but it wasn't.

May 

Zoe runs in two different 5K races.  Dave's 16-year old pickup dies (temporarily)  Jennifer buys a (relatively) new Honda Pilot.  Tristan mini-tours coastal North Carolina.  Pig Pickin' 5!

Jun

The first Big Saia Family Vacation at Surf City.  Tristan tours the south and midwest

July

The Big Roth Family Vacation to Alaska and Canada

August

Back to School; 6th grade for Tristan, 5th grade for Zoe

September

Dave goes back to England for another week

October

Tristan turns 12. State Fair Time!

November

??

December

Tristan sings with the Triangle Youth Ballet's production of "The Nutcracker", and has a solo with the NCBC at the Duke Christmas concert.  

Zoe runs in the Reindeer Romp, coming in 2nd for girls 10 & under, and 3rd for boys and girls 10 and under.  She also performs with the award-winning Glenwood Show Choir

Jennifer got to be the Maid of Honor for her best friend Tiffany's wedding.

And then the year took an unpleasant turn that I'm not going to get into here.

So here's to 2011!

Happy New Year from The Traveling Roths.

The Traveling Roths' Pig Pickin' 4: 我不明白你疯了白人。

(FYI, The Evite invitation is experiencing technical difficulties at the moment. So if you can't reply, you're not alone.)

In the wake 2006's "Traveling Roths' First Annual Pig Pickin'"
2007's Pig Pickin' 2: A Public Evening of Enjoyment , and last year's Pig Pickin' 3: Triple Figures, we've decided to do it yet again. You and your family (children are always welcome) are invited to join us. . . for

Pig Pickin' 4: 我不明白你疯了白人。

We'll supply the barbecue (eastern NC-style), plates cups & silverware, and some all-ages and adult beverages. Feel free to bring a side dish or a dessert to share (put what you're bringing in the comments), a place to sit, anything else you'd like to drink, and a portable table if you have one, and your cameras. We will have a traditional charcoal grill (pork-free) and a deep-fryer available, if someone volunteers to manage them. We'll probably have our hands full with the pig.

Please RSVP via the eVite invite process either way by Sunday, May 17th so we can get an accurate count, and get our pig order into Satriale's Pork Store by Monday the 18th.

Hope to see you here!

Dave, Jennifer, Tristan, and Zoe

Traveling Roths' First Annual Pig Pickin'

We'd been wanting to have a Pig Pickin' at our house for a couple of years, especially after reading Bob Garner's book, North Carolina Barbecue: Flavored by Time. The initial plan was for 2004, but with the company I worked for quickly swirling around the toilet drain, we decided that it was not a good time to be laying out that kind of disposable income. Good thing, as I found myself unemployed about a month after we would've done the party. In 2005, I was gainfully employed again, but as a contractor, the cash flow also seemed too tenuous to blow on something like a big party.

But in 2006, permanently employed again, the time was finally right. We sent out pre-invitations to our Pig Pickin'; an event that we hope we can repeat annually.

Three weeks beforehand, I put down the deposit and payment for the weekend rental of a pig cooker; a converted 250 gallon fuel oil tank complete with a grate, doors for adding charcoal and controlling airfow, and chimneys, all mounted on an axle with a trailer hitch. $30 for the weekend, plus a $40 refundable deposit.

On the Monday before the party, after settling on as accurate a count as we would get, plus working in a fudge factor for the non-respondees, we decided on the size pig we'd need, figuring on one pound of dressed pig per person. Seventy pounds. I called in our pig order to Tom Inscoe's Wholesale Meats, on Alston Avenue in Durham. They're able to handle orders for pigs anywhere from 50 to 150 pounds.

Friday after work, I picked up the cooker and the pig. I'll bet you're wondering about the state of the pig when you get it. I know I was. It's fully dressed, meaning guts removed, cleaned inside and out, and de-haired, with the head and trotters fully intact. The backbone had been split down the middle so that the pig will lay flat on the cooker, like a butterflied chicken. There were USDA stamps all over the outside, and the pig was in a plastic bag. I had the kid at the meat market throw it in the back of my truck, and the pig, cooker, and I left for home, via the back roads as the cooker didn't really look like it was up for interstate highway speeds.

When I got home, after the obligatory photographs, the pig went into my Action Packer, and got loaded with ice. It was Friday afternoon, and cooking wouldn't start until Sunday morning. If your curious, a 70-lb. pig is roughly the same size as a Labrador Retriever.

According to the book, a pig the size of ours should take seven hours to cook, and require 60 pounds of charcoal. Since the party started at 5:00, I needed to put the pig on at 10:00 am, so I started the charcoal around 9. A word on charcoal. The guy in the book used charcoal briquettes, which I detest. They're sawdust and fillers like paraffin and creosote pressed together into a tiny pillow shape, and in my opinion good for nothing. I was using natural lump charcoal; charcoal the way Jesus intended. Charcoal with True Grit and none of that terrible jumble of insults and lame questions often found in lesser charcoal. (thanks, Mark). That being said, lighting it required about a quart of lighter fluid, which is something else I wouldn't ordinarily use, but in this case necessary since I needed to start with 20 pounds of coals.

I got the charcoal lit and while it was burning down a bit, I retrieved the pig from the action packer and started to prepare it. My part of the preparation involved drying the pig, and salting the inside. The hardest part was just wrangling it from the action packer. I couldn't imagine a career in the Mafia if a 70 lb. corpse gave me that much trouble. After hoisting the pig onto the grill (skin side up for the first six hours), I encounted what would be my main challenge in cooking this pig. The book said to keep the interior of the cooker at 225-250F the whole time, but that amount of real charcoal was going to burn much hotter than that. Every few minutes I would spray water on the coals to bring the heat down. Next year I'll probably use half as much charcoal to start.

So the first six hours were basically lighting and adding additional charcoal under the hams and shoulders, while keeping the area under the ribs coal-free to prevent this much thinner area of meat from finishing too quickly. At 4:00, it was time to flip the pig. With some help from Andy, we got the pig on its back, and began to butter and sauce the inside cavity. It was already looking and smelling great, and those of us present at that time (Andy, Jason, and I) sampled a bit from the ham. It was right! It just needed another hour on its back to crisp up the skin, and give the sauce (Eastern North Carolina-style; apple cider vinegar, red pepper flake, salt and pepper) some time to soak in.

5:00 came, the guests started arriving, and the pig was ready. We did the serving true Pig-Pickin' style, leaving the pig on the cooker, and letting people come up and get it themselves.
Stephen, who grew up on a hog farm in Eastern NC, which is were the best barbecue in the world comes from (don't let anyone tell you any different) grabbed a knife and fork and checked out the secret areas of the pig to see how badly I'd screwed it up. Surprisingly, he gave the pig his blessing, and gave me an A+ for my preparation of the pig. When he found out it was my first time, my grade was upgraded to A++. Coming from Stephen, that meant a lot. We were now officialy ready to eat.

Ironically enough, the first person to the pig was Shakir, a Muslim guy from Morocco who was in the midst of his first trip to the States. He didn't speak any English, but you could tell that he was really excited to be there, and enjoying this great American Tradition. This is probably how Americans cook out in their backyards all the time right?

So the party was a huge success, thanks in large part to Andy and Shelley for their constant help with everything, Jason for showing up at the right time and finding the keg, and Mebane Presbyterian Church for letting us nearly clean out their ice machine, and borrow their chairs and beverage cooler. (That was just iced tea in there, honest!) Thanks be to the guests too, whose wonderful assortment of side dishes and desserts, as well as their excellent company really made the evening.

So mark your calendars, the Traveling Roth's Second Annual Pig Pickin' is scheduled for May 27th, 2007.