Birthday Party with Wild Boar “Piggy Power” Cooked 8 Ways
My son celebrated his 11th birthday last night with family… wherein our culture, family means extended family. And my wife has lots of siblings so we’ve got lots of nephews. And we’ve got household help and drivers, all who helped at one point in time make this birthday party with the wild boar “Piggy Power” happen. This is cooked paleo diet at its finest with a half breed wild boar we fed for 2 months in our back yard, we fed with our own leftovers. This is how we do it in the Philippines.
Piggy power the wild boar was brought in from the mountain of Tabuk. She was born, a cross breed of a truly wild boar mother and a “native pig” father. The old Ilocano natives bred this pig and raised this pig up to 3 months when my driver bought her for 3,500 pesos. Piggy power was transported in a wooden cage and via bus while she was just at an estimated 11 kilos. She arrived with a haunting wild boar squeal at 4am in our home. We took a video of her. Named her “Piggy Power”.
That video was taken April 5, 2012. And Piggy Power was slaughtered June 01, 2012. So we took care of her for almost 2 months. And she grew! Grew hungrier had to be fed with more and more food. Asking for more food. The slaughterer man said the wild boar was some 30 kilos live weight. Pretty good.
Manny the slaughterer had some vacant time in between his slaughter house job and butcher in the market job. Had an assistant with him. Dedicated some time for a house visit slaughter and showed us slaughtering talent. Not only for killing, but also cleaning, and chopping up Piggy Power in all the familiar commercial cuts we know. His assistant cleaned the intestines while Manny was carving. We made sure to get all of Piggy Power’s blood for use in a traditional Filipino blood dish called “dinuguan.”
To see a picture of the very clean entrails, click here.
That same evening June 01 we ate some of Piggy Power for dinner: cooked liver, kidneys and heart in soy sauce, chicharon bulaklak, dinuguan and pork barbecue.
Last night’s culminating birthday party we had 8 ways of “Piggy Power” served:
– Dinuguan – the blood and the intestines, lungs and others, with Pangasinan / Calasiao white Puto
– Crispy Pata – 4 legs
– Adobo
– Liempo grilled / inihaw
– Sisig from the head
– Sinigang soup using kamias
The help asked for some liver to spruce up their pancit / rice noodles. If we counted all the other ways during day 1 and 2, it seems we had Piggy Power wild boar in more than 8 ways. We still have a lot of piggy power meat in our freezers and some left overs.
Now I understand the traditional Filipino provincial celebration using a fattened pig for a feast. We dug back farther in the past and used a half breed wild boar. We fed it our scraps which are usually organic grade. We made sure we didn’t give her any pork so as not to make a cannibal out of her. We wound up with a very healthy pig. The slaughterer saw through the entrails as we did too… they were perfect, healthy, clean, no visible live worms. Unlike commercially slaughtered pigs which may have tumors and visible parasites. The blood we used for our dinuguan was pure from just 1 animal, with no dilution of water. And the vinegar we used to prevent blood coagulation was also organic.
It is the purity of food we protected here in this feast. Because we were eating it ourselves, we raised this animal carefully with full thoughtfulness. And we slaughtered it as humanely as we knew how. Had the children watch too. Education for our children is important. People must know where their food comes from. Â If you eat meat, especially for you urbanites, see, hear and feel the animal alive what you are going to eat. Â Vegans wince at killing animals so they sacrifice their own human health, but we meat eaters, normal humans, say thanks to Piggy Power for the food!
