Pig Roast in Illinois

At the beginning of October, Chris and I flew out to Urbana-Champaign to see the Penn State vs Illinois football game. WOOHOO!! But wait...why Penn State vs Illinois again? Well, Chris's brother is a junior at UIUC, and some of Chris's relatives went to/grew up near Penn State, so it was a darn good excuse to have a family reunion. (Convenient that Illinois is in the middle of the country – we had representatives from Maryland, Texas, North Carolina, and California.)

Key stats for me before this trip:

1. I'd never been to Illinois (outside of O'Hare).
2. I'd never gone to a college football game.
3. I'd never gone to a tailgate.

Let me start by saying that Chris's uncles and their friend Loren did a professional job at tailgating. They got a 110-pound pig (that's 110 pounds AFTER gutting) and they started roasting at 6am (or something crazy early like that).

At first, I was imagining that there would be a pig rotating on a stick over an open flame (like Chris's frat did one year, with fairly gruesome results). But this was, I believe, Loren's SIXTH pig roast, so he knew what he was doing. He brought something called a "China Box" to slow-roast the pig:

The pig is inside the box, and those are the coals on top. I still don't quite understand how the heat went down (heard mumbles about the metal conducting the heat), but here's us enjoying the warmth, the delicious smell of roasting pig, and the beer at about 9:30am. (And yeah, my Advantage Federer shirt was the closest thing I had to orange.)

More pictures of the star:

We had fantastic sides like potato salad and this really great dish of beans, all thanks to Loren. The pig got the only piece of fruit we brought to the tailgate:

And it was soooo tender and yummy. Mmm! I didn't even mind smelling like pig smoke for days after we got back. We invited all the nearby tailgaters to come grab some, since well, we had 110 pounds of pig, but still had three or four gallon bags full of meat by the end of the day. Awesome.

At about 2 o'clock, we all headed over to the Memorial Stadium to see the game. The game itself wasn't particularly competitive, but I enjoyed the marching band:

Oh, and here's my obligatory picture with some corn. We drove by a lot of corn on our way from O'Hare/Midway airports to the university, but this is UIUC's experimental cornfield; apparently it's the "oldest experimental cornfield" in the United States.

Other tidbits from the trip:

• We saw Zombieland, which I was initially very skeptical of, but actually it was a lot of fun!
• We stayed at a bed and breakfast called Akademika, which was excellent. Big comfy room, yummy breakfast, and walking distance to campus, if you're ever in the area and looking for a place to stay.
• We pre-paid for a tank of gas at Enterprise, and brought the car back with the empty light on. Aww yeah. Getting our money's worth, haha. So now you know that a trip from Chicago to Urbana-Champaign and back is one full tank of gas in a Chrysler 300. (Btw, the Chrysler 300 is a terrible car.)

Last weekend, we tried out Loren's bean recipe. It turned out lovely, and we had enough to last us all week! Here it is if you'd like to try it.

Steve's Beans

1 (1-pound) tube regular or spicy Jimmy Dean sausage

4 (15- to 16-oz cans of different types of beans (drained) (dark red kidney, black beans, navy beans, pinto beans, Great Northern beans, etc.)

1 (31-oz) can pork and beans (drained)

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup barbeque sauce

1/2 cup ketchup

1/2 large onion, chopped

1 (10-oz) can regular of spicy chopped tomatoes, drained (I use Rotel diced tomatoes and chilis)

1 teaspoon liquid smoke

1 teaspoon mustard

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground pepper

6 to 8 strips of bacon

Preheat oven to 350F. In a large skillet, brown the sausage, breaking it up into pieces as it cooks. When cooked through, remove from skillet and drain fat.

In a very large bowl, mix sausage and remaining ingredients (except bacon). Transfer to a 9x13-inch or other large baking pan. Place bacon strips on top and bake for 1 hour. If necessary, run under broiler to crisp bacon before serving. Makes 15 servings.

Chris had to go to three supermarkets to find Jimmy Dean sausage, though to be fair, he started with Whole Foods and Mollie Stone's, and I don't think that stuff is full of local or organic goodness... Anyways, Safeway was the winner; they had an entire aisle dedicated to Jimmy Dean sausage, haha.

That's about it, but here's all the pics from the trip, if you want to see more!