Beth and Doug were headed to Vietnam for a year. To wish them fair winds and happy travels, we put on a little dinner party. It also happened that I had just come back from Yakima with a fresh side of pork, along with some pork "accessories" (bones, head, some inside bits, etc.) which was a great excuse for some fun cooking. What follows was my attempt to say Goodbye with a pig. But first, cocktails: the Bees Knees, a prohibition era cocktail with gin, a honey simple syrup

Over the previous weekend I worked alongside my brother and several of his friends in what has become an annual ritual, now in its fourth year: the "processing" of pigs. By processing, of course, I mean killing, cleaning, scalding, scraping, eviscerating, halving, butchering, wrapping, and labeling. But processing sounds oddly sanitary, doesn't it? It's a lot of work -- the kind of work once tackled by small communities, without the benefit of artificial refrigeration, with