thenewchurchsupper

Christmas Pig Feast and the Molasses Cookie Recipe

What an amazing crowd of about 650 people at dinner last night!  We feasted on smoked pig and whole boneless pork loins, spinach salad with mandarin oranges, scalloped potatoes, apples, rice pudding and molasses cookies.  Tony Balay graciously offered to volunteer his time and BBQ expertise to prepare all the meat for us, which involved quite a lot of preparation.  Tony picked up the pig, a 220 pound Duroc, from a ranch in Scenic on Monday.  He prepped the pig and started smoking it on his grill at 10pm on Tuesday.  19 hours later, the Christmas pig was ready for display and within an hour and a half it was nothing but bare bones!  The volunteers in the kitchen prepped the 200 pounds of pork loin with a beer and butter marinade that was injected and allowed to absorb overnight in the refrigerator.  At noon on Wednesday, the loins were covered with seasonings and strips of bacon, then went into the smoker to cook for 4 hours.  Meanwhile, our hard-working volunteers made 100 dozen cookies, 24 crockpots of rice pudding, 18 pans of scalloped potatoes, and the salad with 36 pounds of spinach and 24 pounds of romaine lettuce.  Very few leftovers tonight!

Tony prepares the pig for display and carving.

All dressed up and ready for dinner.

Isn’t she lovely.

It’s time to eat!

Apples sauteed in butter with brown sugar and cinnamon goes great with roast pork.

Spinach salad with mandarin oranges, celery, green onions, sugared almonds, and an orange juice vinaigrette

Molasses cookies, look for the recipe at the end of this post.

Thank you Tony for all your hard work. Now you can have dinner too!

We made pretty quick work of this little piggy.

And then after dinner…a wonderful celebration of the season with our children singing songs of baby Jesus and Christmas Joy!

Molasses Cookies,  7 dozen made with small scoop

½ cup butter, softened

½ cup shortening

1 ½ cup sugar

½ cup molasses

2 eggs, lightly beaten

4 cups flour

2 ¼ tsp baking  soda

2 ¼ tsp ground ginger

1 ½ tsp ground cloves

1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon

½   tsp salt

granulated sugar for coating

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Cream butter and shortening, then beat in sugar until light and fluffy.  Beat in molasses and eggs until thoroughly combined.  Whisk dry ingredients together and add gradually to butter mixture until smooth and blended.  Drop by small scoops into sugar to coat, rolling into balls.  Put on ungreased cookie sheets or parchment paper to bake.  Bake for 7 or 8 minutes.  Cookies flatten as they bake.  Remove from oven and move to wire rack to cool.

We’re taking a little break from our Wednesday night programing from now until January 16th.  The menu for the 16th will be posted the week before, so check back here or on the Calvary Lutheran Church website http://www.calvaryrapidcity.org/events/ if you want to know what’s for dinner.  Thanks to all the many volunteers who have helped out in the kitchen and dining room for the first 13 weeks.  Looking forward to 14 more weeks in the coming new year before the break for summer!