Lambchops? Coño!

Rasta Budweiser,
La Parguera, P.R.

I find no shame in being honest.  If more people were, there would be less to be ashamed of.  And I don’t mean the sensational-type; I’m just not, as Mom would say, “Mutton dressing up as lamb.”

Lamb.  People either love, hate, or haven’t gotten around to trying it.  British tradition had my Mother serving it once a month, with mint sauce (ugh), which I keep on hand, just in case Mom pops in from 3,000 miles away.  You never know.

I can never remember the hierarchical cuts of meat; all I know is the less expensive, the slower I need to cook it.  A tasty pot roast is preferable to an overcooked Filet Mignon any day, and my cooking skills aren’t the greatest.  Whenever I live alone, my preferred culinary method has always been broiling a steak or chop, but I haven’t owned a broiler in 15 years so now I pan-fry, which I’ve gotten pretty good at, thanks in part to Cuco.   

 

A Parisian-trained Puerto Rican Independista restaurateur in Parguera, Cuco taught this Gringa the best method for pan-frying Churrasco (skirt-steak) to make it melt in your mouth.  He serves breakfast and lunch in el Karakol, his revolutionary-plastered establishment in the heart of the pedestrian plaza; evening is purely for drinking and deep-fried snacks.

Over the years, Cuco would periodically ask me to paint huge signs to post along Route 304 into town, advertising his popular Sangria Coño, empty plastic cups of which littered the plaza following every rowdy weekend.  But no matter how broke I was, I always said no.

“I can’t paint Coño signs,” I protested, since coño is a dirty word.

Foreign swear words sound so much nicer, don't they?  Boriqua girlfriend Isabel, always impeccably groomed and mannered, says Co-ño with such distinction, I’m jealous.  Kinda like pronouncing its equivalent: Shee-it.  My Dutch brother-in-law loves to suddenly blurt out, F__k-a-Duck, for some unknown reason.

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“Besides,” I continued, “Hitler started as a sign painter,” assuming Cuco had read Mein Kampf.

Just a brief note about another’s lifestyle:  Erica-here wandered into town one day and stayed for a couple months.  She had learned to make rustic jewelry from someone, somewhere, using whatever natural materials were available, augmented by her very small stash of treasured beads.  This German woman was alone, traversing the globe on foot, peddling her wares wherever the tourists went.  She’d made a killing in Hawaii and offered to teach me but no, I had to stick with gourds.  (For those of you who think, "I can't.")

  

Erica, who adored Czar, would set up her cardboard-makeshift display on a bench outside Cuco's place, which he allowed for free.  I watched her make pretty good money from tourists heading for the Fondo Cristal, or glass bottom boat, which, every hour or so each evening, heads to the Phosphorescent Bay nearby.   Vital income for the town, no one mentions how the motors of the tour boats are slowly but surely churning up and destroying their very source of income. 

Andrea and collie Czar
in the Plaza, la Parguera, PR

Like clockwork, each day Cuco would set out a box with leftovers for the Satos, or street dogs.  Many was the morning I’d be walking Czar and look longingly at their feast of Arroz con Pollo.  There's a good heart.

So I was gazing over the meat section recently with my typical, glassy expression.  You don’t always find lamb in the market yet there it was, all pre-packaged from somewhere else, but at least here in the U.S.A. rather than New Zealand.  Nothing against N.Z.; my fraternal grandfather came from there, but we need to support our own suppliers as much as possible.  I’m sure the New Zealanders can understand that.   Send it to the Aussies; they’re always having Bar-bees.

The younger-than-me butcher asked if I needed help.  They had shoulder and loin chops, 2 per package; a bit more than my allowable budget-per-day, but I deserve a treat now and then.  Every shoulder chop package looked the same but one; I asked him if it was really the same as the others.

“I don’t know; I’ve never had lamb."

Then you shouldn’t be a butcher; no, I didn’t say it…who am I?

Mom loves a good joke

I’m like my Mom in that I strike up conversations with whoever’s ear I happen to grab, so we chatted about lamb a bit, but it turned into his lament on how they used to be REAL butchers and cut the meat themselves, but no more.  Nothing’s the same anymore, I said, to which he readily agreed.

“Have heart…I’m writing a blog about that very thing…you’re not the only one who feels that way.”

Looking again at all my choices, I selected the smallest package of shoulder chops I could find.

“The loin's the better cut, but this is all I can afford, so I’ll just cook it slower.”   A well-dressed older-than-me woman smiled sweetly as she passed, but I knew she wasn’t judging me.  Maybe she remembers the Great Depression.

 As I said, I have no qualms about my current state of poverty.  Never measure wealth by money.  In my own life it ebbs and flows like the tide; all I need is patience.

“Enjoy your dinner!”  the butcher waved.

“Thank you; I will!”