PIGS!

In an age when factory farming and antibiotics given to all animals, healthy or not, is scarily commonplace, it's nice to see articles like this one in the NY Times. It gives me hope. Especially after returning from another wonderful weekend in the Berkshires, after attending the season's foodiest event: North Plain's Pig Roast!

Now now, you may know that, as a Jew and a relative non-meat-eater, I do not usually enjoy the thrill of roasting a giant animal and then eating it. But there were a few wonderful details of the pig roast that made it quite exhilarating to be able to take part in. To start, the farm on which the even took place was a farm benefit. Proceeds from the mere $35 tickets (which, may I add, sold out before 6:30 pm on the day of the event), went right back to the people who supplied the night's delights. All of the food and drink served at the event was either from the farm itself, or from very very close surrounding farms. And man, you could sure as hell tell.

To be honest, after eating the local cheeses (including that BOMB Monterey Chevre) and the freshly made baba ganoush, and then having my second course of buttered sweet corn, beans, fire roasted summer squash, and fresh salad greens with a light vin, I wasn't even hungry for the meat! By the time the two big ol' pigs and one veal calf (all raised on the farm, killed by the men who fed them for their whole existences) were removed from the spits, I was stuffed to the brim. I managed to take one bite of some meat someone brought me on a plate, and to nibble on one of the 40+ chickens that were also slaughtered on the premises and roasted over the fire.

Local food prevails and continues to make me happy.