Oink!

While I am always quite surprised when a rifle passes by me in my host homes, I know it means pork for the next couple of days. Sr. Omar brought out the gun, which I didn’t know I was living with, and headed out into the night to a neighbor/relative’s house. Sra. Cirila then left in the dead of night a few hours later to what I can only imagine was to butcher what was left of the pig. And without fail, we ate plenty of pork for the next few days. (The difference being that this house has refrigeration, so I didn’t feel as bad about eating the meat after days of gathering flies on the counter of my last host family.)

Ciri asked me if I ate tamales. This is always a tricky question. Sure, I eat them, but it is the hidden treasure inside that I might not eat. I knew I wouldn’t be surprised by pig feet again as they know I don’t eat feet. Visions of delicious pork nestled inside the tamales danced in my mind as I responded with an excited “yes!”

I guess I wasn’t thinking: People raise pigs by fattening them. Therefore the pigs are fat when killed. Therefore people eat lots of fat. QED.

My tamale was filled with a two inch by four inch by one inch chunk of pig fat. There was no meat at all, as you can be sure I poked the jelly-like form. Chorizo is palatable if only for it’s texture as you can crunch into the fried shell as your teeth melt into the nuggets of fat and rip through the skin. If nothing else, the work required to eat chorizo makes it tolerable, not to mention it is smaller. But this was just soft lard. I couldn’t do it.

The first night I ate around it and slid it onto the top plate in the pile of dirty dishes. The second time I was alone in the kitchen and tried to throw it out to door to the dog or whatever animal might find it more appetizing than me. “Tried” is the operative word here. I wound back and released… only for it to hit the overhanging zinc roof with a resounding thud. So much for being stealthy!

You’d think that would be clue enough to keep the lard off my plate the next time. But for breakfast the following morning I found a chunk of unfried, soft pig fat on my plate sans tamale. This time I threw it within inches of the dog that gobbled it up before anyone was the wiser.