Don't Ask, Don't Look---Just Eat!

Today we had one of our first of many interesting culinary experiences. Today, Joy and I were walking down to a great little taco stand on our lunch hour from school. We got there and every seat at the couple of make shift plastic tables that they set out on the sidewalk were full.

There was a market right next door so we walked in to see if they had a place to get some food in there. In the back corner we found a little Ma and Pa cafeteria stlye restaurant where you chose from a couple of pre-made items. All of the items were very authentic and honestly looked very strange. The one thing they had which looked somewhat normal were some tortas. Some of the tortas were filled with a Mexican cheese mix and the others with a meat that I assumed was pork or beef. We asked and they said they were chicharron tortas. That meant little to us at first because most of the meat here has Spanish names that sound nothing like our English word, but they taste the same. We eat Barbicoa and Carnicero (Beef and Pork) tacos all the time. We assumed this meat was very similar. We bought 2 Chicharron tortas and also got a queso one to try. The queso didn't suit me as it tasted like a big mouthful of ricotto. The chicharron torta also wasn't great, but it wasn't horrible either and I was hungry. For those of you who know me, I eat very quickly. So despite the weird texture of the meat I ate it in about a minute. About the time I was done, but Joy had just finished her 3rd bite. At that time she was playing with a peice of the meat on our plate. It looked like it had little prickly hair sticking out of it. To say the least she lost her appetite and I started to feel like I was going to vomit.

The first thing we did was buy a special liquid yogurt item they sell to help digestion in Mexico. It is supposed to help with disagreeable foods. We then headed back to the school and told the Principal what we ate. A weird look came over his face as he said "You ate that" To give you a perspective on the principal, he has lived in Mexico for 30 years so he pretty much is fully Mexican. He asked if we knew what it was. We said no and he said Chicharron is the same as our pork rind. Immediately the word became familiar to me. What we ate was what they call a pig fat and skin sandwich. At that moment, I started to think about the hairy peice of meat realizing that this meat probably came fresh from butchers we have seen and might have had a little hair left. Joy and I looked at each other with a bit of queasy uneasiness.

Before this we had decided to adopt a don't ask policy with food. The only question we ask, if friends are nearby, is will this make us sick. We asked this when we got back to the school and he said "I hope not". Comforting! Whether we get sick or not is probably not as damaging as this new memory that we made. Of eating a hairy, pig fat and skin sandwich. Spam doesn't sound so bad now!