When cooking at home I usually just scoop peanut butter out of the jar with my fingers and eat it. It’s a simple recipe, easy to follow and quickly tamps nutrients into your system without a lot of fuss. For special occasions, like failing to discourage guests from coming over, I may put out a sleeve of saltines or some pickles. But if I want to get downright elegant, I now know how to cook an entire pig.

First, you need to know two people getting married. In this case let’s congratulate newlyweds Steve and Joella Arment, who had a fantastic getting-married ceremony last week up at Arrowhead Farm on Alder Slope. I suppose you could cook an entire pig for another occasion, but the recipe I have is for a wedding so let’s stick to that.

Ingredients: a pig.

Once you have your ingredients, next step is to call The Dollar Stretcher and arrange to hang your ingredients in their cooler. Try not to let your ingredients swing into the friendly Dollar Stretcher representative while you winch it out of your truck, slamming them into the wall. Especially right after they ask you to not let that very thing happen. Note: ingredients can be heavy and hard to manage.

Next step is also crucial. If you are not friends with Michael Clinchy and Kim Phelps, remedy that. These guys wake up at 2 in the morning to start the cooking process and I can not stress enough how vital it is to have them do it. Waking up at 2 a.m. is about the same as not going to sleep at all, no matter how early you start lying to yourself that this will work out fine. It does not. I had to break into the Dollar Stretcher and borrow their winch to open my eyelids. Had it been up to me, that wedding reception food line would have been an angry, hungry mob. At least I would have been well-rested to fight them off.

Next, prepare your oven by being on good terms with blacksmith Chuck Fraser and reserve his custom pig cooker for your event. Fraser transformed a large propane tank – same kind that’s probably in your yard – into a culinary arts sculpture on wheels you can tow behind your truck. It’s large enough to cook most creatures. Fire goes in one end and there’s another firebox opposite to add smoke flavor. Pretty standard kitchen equipment.

Clinchy and Phelps handled all the technical stuff like not overcooking the ribs and making sure the large chunks got cooked. Michael uses fancy probes with digital readouts to announce temperatures inside the meat, heat inside the cooking chamber, prevailing winds, et cetera.

When they say the pig is about ready, begin heating barbecue sauce and then go change out of your pig-cooking clothes into your fancy Soroptimist wedding attire. Watch two friends get married. Smile to yourself because something good is happening. Continue smiling because same reason.

Serve and enjoy. Then stand off to the side and listen to the Darrell Brann, John Morro and Mikey Goodman trio while getting dance tips from Skip Royes.

And that’s how you prepare a wedding pig in Wallowa County.

For more Wallowa County potluck recipes, get my cookbook “Put Pretty Much Anything In A Juve Bowl,” available exclusively at The Bookloft. It’s just one page. The whole book is the same as the title. So maybe save your money. Sorry, Mary.

Jon Rombach is a self-proclaimed local food expert and columnist for the Chieftain.