Friday with a Hogs for the Cause recap

Hi friends! Happy Friday! I am off today for my Spring Break and happy to be catching up after the long weekend last weekend cooking at Hogs for the Cause. I am linking up with Amanda for Friday Favorites. In lieu of my usual, let’s get to my favorites from Hogs!

In case you have not seen my posts about it, Hogs for the Cause is a BBQ cookout fundraiser for families battling pediatric brain cancer. I am the head chef of my team, Sweet Swine O’ Mine, which is the only all female team. I spent the night out with the smoker, so I was responsible for the butts, ribs, sauce, porkpourri (a creative pork dish) and Tabasco sandwich. I delegated the tasks of a mayo dish and bacon dish to other team members. 

There were 85 teams and we came in 7th in Sauce! I made a slightly modified version of this jerk bbq sauce I made for jerk chicken. So folks, this sauce has been voted awesome twice! You need to make it!  Let’s get to the recap.

This was my instagram post to sum it up.

On Friday, we got out there to set up our booth and get everything prepped for Friday night and Saturday, the main event. We had to sell a bacon dish to the public (we never had to serve food on Friday before) so we decided to do a "bakeon sale" with bacon sweet treats. Kudos to the fabulous ladies that baked their heart out!

Setting up the tent

Getting ready to rub some butts!

When I went to get the new (to us) smoker fired up, I noticed that it seemed to have not been used in years. I think this picture says it all…

My friend’s super awesome husband, who is on an opposing team, rigged me up a way to beat the rust as the smoker parts were rusted in a way that I could not control the temperature.

The next door team noticed all of this and offered for us to use their smoker in exchange for beer. I took them up on it!

We danced to the Yacht rock stylings of Where Y’acht and then I settled in for my once a year stint of feeling like a new mom nursing a smoker.

Now on to our food offerings!

Our 26th place mayo dish made by Melissa, which is  a family recipe from my friend Jen for a hoagie salad "iced" with mayo. I refused to try it as I am #teamnomayo

Our 12th place bacon cannolis made by the fabulous Sally.  

Our 18th place Porkpourri dish.  It is pork cooked like my jerk chicken recipe in a deep fried empanada with a pistachio dipping sauce.  Thanks to my friend Laura for making my cooking look festive!

Our ribs that were really good, but came in 70th, because the container melted styrofoam on them.

It was such a fun day with some of my favorite people.  My parents and sisters and their families came, as did many friends.  And the weather was beautiful!

My coworker Mary Katherine, who made yummy sauce herself to serve to the public.

Kate and Ruby had fun with Mr. Gentleman Caller

My best friend Toni came in from Alabama with her family for the first time!

I was happy to spend some quality time with my man once my cooking duties were over.

The team photo.  I love these ladies and all their hard work!

We sold our usual Zapp's Pork Pies to the masses and got rave reviews as usual.  

Trust me, it is good!

After our sales of the bacon treats and pork pies, combined with all of our fundraising throughout the year, we donated somewhere between 10 and 20 thousand dollars as a team!  But the 85 teams combined to do the real good work, together we raised 1.3 million dollars!  We were ready to celebrate!

Can't wait until next year!

It was a long weekend, but totally worth it.  Whenever we had a setback or I dragged myself up to check on the smoker, I remembered the mom who gave the opening remarks at the chef's meeting on Friday.  Her son lost his battle to cancer, but she thanked us for helping her in her task of making his life as normal as possible while he suffered.  We are there for the families and the kids, the food is just lagniappe!  

I hope you have a lovely weekend and a happy Easter or Passover if you are celebrating.  We are having the traditional Good Friday crawfish boil tonight and I'm making Carrots of Insane Greatness for Sunday lunch at my grandmother's house.  See you back next week!

Happy Cooking!

Missy