Day of the Pig set for this Sunday

Jeff Green | May 19, 2016

The Day of the Pig is a feast of food and drink that marks the opening of the Seed to Sausage store for the summer season. This year, it will feature not one, but five pigs. Four guest chefs have been invited to present their own take on preparing an entire pig for optimal flavour and texture at the annual event, which will be held on May 22. Admission to the festival is free.

The chefs who will take up the challenge are Michael Blackie from NeXT in Ottawa; Bruce Wood, the chef at Beau's Beer brewpub from Vankleek Hill; Stev George from Olivea in Kingston; and Parham's own Tim Cota from Cota's Mobile Catering and BBQ.

The fifth pig will be prepared by Seed to Sausage's new manager of operations, Derek MacGregor – who just came over from Chien Noir in Kingston, where he was the chef for almost 10 years.

Other restaurants that will have food booths this year include Cafe Vic from Prince Edward County, which will be offering vegetarian fare; The Grizzly Grill from Kingston; Apperetivo from Ottawa; Slow Taco from Prince Edward County; and Enright Cattle Co.

Four Ontario breweries will be on hand: Beaus, Big Rig, Kichesipi, all from Ottawa and vicinity, and MacKinnon Brothers from Loyalist Township. Two wineries, 3 Dogs and Cassady, both from Prince Edward County, will be there as well.

Live music is back this year after a year off. Singer-songwriter Tom Savage will be appearing on his own and with a number of his musical friends in various combinations.

Local and regional artisan food producers will have booths as well. As the local food movement develops in Frontenac County and south-eastern Ontario, the Day of the Pig has cemented itself as an event that attracts a wide variety of food and beverage producers and restaurants, many of whom either use Seed to Sausage products in their menus, or have products that are available at the Seed to Sausage store.

The Day of the Pig has been moved to the Sunday of the Victoria Day weekend this year.

“We found that many of the restaurants, caterers and other food businesses are very busy on the Saturday of the long weekend, so we moved the event to Sunday in order to make it easier for them to attend. Of course, the Victoria Day weekend is the start of the cottage season, and we welcome all the seasonal people to our store,” said Mike McKenzie, president of Seed to Sausage.

In its continuing expansion, Seed to Sausage took possession of a state of the art slicer last week. The $100,000 piece of equipment (purchased with the help of a loan from the Frontenac Community Futures Development Corporation) will speed up production of bacon, free up staff and provide opportunities to bring more products on stream.

Derek McGregor, who started at Seed to Sausage just last week, said that after 10 years at the helm of Chien Noir, which is the core restaurant around which three others have sprung, he is looking forward to a different kind of challenge. He will now be working 8 – 5, Monday to Friday, in contrast to the afternoon/evenings and weekends that he worked at Chien Noir. Being involved with production at Seed to Sausage will allow him to explore different kinds of recipes.

“My initial plan, once I am fully familiar with the operation here, is to make a different fresh sausage each week for customers this summer,” he said.

The list of fresh and cured sausages that will be needed for the store’s season opening day, all while supplying a continually expanding wholesale market and the Ottawa Seed to Sausage store, is long and daunting. Nonetheless, MacGregor nevertheless said he would have the first example of his recipe-of-the-week sausages available for the Day of the Pig.

“Now I guess I have to follow through on that,” he said. That will give him something to think about as he commutes against the flow of traffic each day along Road 38 north from Kingston each morning.