The REAL Thing

Hi! I should really not be writing here, because I must get some work done for my college courses, but I ran down to the kitchen for something to drink and decided to have a Coke, and just couldn't resist.

 I am not a soda drinker, ordinarily, but Coke in Haiti is really good, I am told, because it is made with honest to goodness sugar, none of that corn syrup solids stuff, and lots of it.  So, OK, anybody notice something unusual here? Since I am studying electrons at the moment, the utter randomness of the bottles above just caught my eye, as it did yours, I am sure!

This is rather typical processing procedure here- randomness.  One night at Foun's the waiter came and people were ordering a second drink, and someone said, they'd better not, you just never know about the beers here!  Not being a beer drinker, I said, what do you mean? Apparently, sometimes one Haitian beer can have the alcohol of two. And you don't know till it's too late, I guess.

Here is another thing I have never seen at home, which I plan to look for when I get back:

"Lait entier en poudre."  In Pennsylvania where I'm from, the words "nonfatdrymilk" all fit together in a neat little sandwich, preceeded by Carnationinstant.  Lait entier means the whole thing, the real deal, the entire milk.  This means it has that 4% milkfat that whole milk has.  Believe me, it tastes MUCH better than the nonfatdry that I remember.  Also, and this is really important:  If you sprinkle it delicately enough into your hot coffee or tea- it melts before it turns into that disgusting lump  of stuff that nonfatdry does!  In other words, it behaves a whole lot like non-dairy creamers, except I get to drink the calcium and skip the corn syrup solids AND support the dairy industry! Is that a win-win situation or what?

Now skip this last part, if you are a little faint of heart.  This is something I just noticed today. Dr. Mortel always says, in Haiti you should never ask what it is you are eating. If you like it, eat. If you do not, stop. Fair enough. Whenever I eat some meat that I do not recognize, I have been assuming it was goat meat. I mean, I knew it was not beef, or turkey, and after all there are hundreds of goats walking around here.

About a month ago I learned the alarming news that cat is considered fair game here. Some friends told me of a husband and wife they know who have an ongoing argument at their house: She gets a housecat, with the intention of keeping it as a pet, a couple weeks go by, she maybe steps out to go visit friends for the day, and he eats it. They have not worked this out yet, apparently. 

 I knew that I saw dogs everywhere, but that I rarely saw cats. So the clue phone was ringing, I just did not want to pick it up, as my friend Karen has told me often enough.

Today I was eating lunch and it occurred to me that the ribs I was looking at were way too tiny for a goat. I mean, really-- if the goat were that young, the bones would just be cartilage, and not hard like these were.

I hope I am wrong about this.  I also hope I have not been too indelicate for the general readership, and that some wise soul writes to tell me that goat ribs are, after all, scaled much smaller than I think.  And that if it were a cat, it would have to be a panther or something like that to have ribs the size I am looking at here.  The photograph did not get clear, but it's probably better that way.  For the record, it was brown and tender, and tasted like beef, which was what made me think- well, goat!  It's just- those goats are so husky and sturdy looking.

Can vegetarianism be far behind?

Note!  It is Thursday and I did look up the cat skeleton:  Cat ribs are much smaller than these. What a sigh of relief. It had to be a little goat, though.