Pixie in Paradise

DISCLAIMER: This post is about preparing conchs for dinner. Vegans and animal activists proceed with caution. I’m not looking to get canceled, I am just hungry.

Having returned last week from a whirlwind, action-packed two-week Costa Rica/Panama vacation with my new British pal, Anna, I’m quickly reminded of what life is like here on this little island in Belize. Before leaving for that trip I tried to empty the kitchen and refrigerator of as many perishables as necessary, but as I discovered right after returning, someone had been in my only pantry cupboard chewing on a bag of rice. Their name rhymes with “house” and they left some tiny, very recognizable turds behind as if to say, “Thanks for the full belly, I’ll let you clean up my mess.”

At least some of us have full bellies. Don’t misconstrue my words: I am not starving over here. There’s food all over the island from the many dusty grocery stores to lots of restaurant options but if you are trying to stay on any kind of budget or have special dietary requirements (don’t come) or have a craving for a specific dish, then you have to hunt for food items. Literally, hunt for them.

Those little rodent jerks plagued the rural houses I grew up in, in the Midwest. I know what their trail looks like and have spent a lot of time cleaning and bleaching cabinets because of them. Luckily there’s only room in this small kitchen to dedicate one cabinet to pantry items. I pulled out as much as I felt like, to assess the damage. You read that right: I didn’t pull everything out like I should have. I cherry picked what items I thought looked delicious to a mouse. It’s really not worth going into detail, but yes, I was wrong and ended up eventually emptying the entire area to inspect all of it. I had to pay for my lazy mistake again the next day when I was very hungry and trying to cook dinner. Grabbing a very expensive box of gluten free spaghetti, I salted some boiling water and threw the contents of the whole box in. The box really looked secure from the outside, no holes chewed or anything. However, I had previously opened that long paper box to use a little spaghetti. Once I was done, I used a big piece of masking tape to secure it closed and that was how I found it when I went to use it a few days ago. Logic and spatial awareness told me that an entire mouse could not squeeze into that box. As I stirred the pasta that had been freshly baptized, I noticed a small dark piece of something floating around the long noodles. I had to catch it which of course burned my fingers in that hot water but I was finally able to fish the little dark object out to more closely inspect it. Unfortunately it was the right color and shape of a mouse dropping but it could have also been a long dead bug, harmless, dried up and partially boiled. Not gonna lie, I was tempted to keep proceeding with the dinner plan. I even looked over at Rasta and thought, “Well shit. He hasn’t been to the doctor for anything in 25 years but for stitches when someone tried to cut his arm off with a machete, so he’d probably survive mouse poop pasta.” I hated to waste food. I mean, I wouldn’t have eaten it but he’d probably be fine, right? After all of that I decided to scrap the idea and used gluten free penne pasta which sucked, like I knew it would. I just hate the shape and texture of penne – a first world problem. However, I went to the butcher shop in search of chicken to add to that pasta and it turned out to be closed on a day when the shop was normally open and that, in my opinion, escalates itself from a first world problem to something that requires a higher acuity level in ranking. The amount of times the butcher shop is closed when I want meat or they’ve run out of the meat I want to cook happens way too often. Just when I think I know a schedule as to when a shop is open or fresh deliveries of products come in, the script is flipped. Or, I’m just hungry and can’t remember anything. Either way, you can’t just go to any grocery store and buy meat as I’ve mentioned before. That is taking your life – your stomach, anyway – into your own hands.

The next morning I still had a couple items sitting on the counter that had been spared by the greedy rodent, which included Rasta’s two packets of hot chocolate. We had been grocery shopping together months ago and he was interested in what they were so I described what this Swiss Miss™ powder was and he wanted to try some, having never had any before. I will never stop describing this domestic arrangement like anything other than living with a sweet but feral animal, as the cultural differences come up so often. I don’t think everyone in Belize is untamed or unknowing of things, I just assumed everyone knew or had been exposed to packets of chemical-filled hot cocoa we have on grocery shelves in the US. But let’s be honest, Rasta isn’t huddled around a campfire or gliding across a frozen lake on ice skates because we are after all in a very tropical part of the world. We’re in the Caribbean, in Central America and I don’t think “hot chocolate,” I think, “rum.” 

He saw the hot chocolate on the counter at 5:30am before he was leaving for work and wanted to try some. I had already started boiling water to pour over coffee (the kind I just learned how to make in Costa Rica – with a “coffee sock”), so I emptied the cocoa powder into a to-go cup for him. He started to pull out his favorites – powdered cream and sugar – and I told him none of that was necessary. Very confused by this he glanced at me. Knowing how much he has to doctor even his regular coffee I said, “Babe, everything you want to be in the cup is already in that mix, sugar, cream, everything.” He didn’t look convinced but when he took his first sip and happily exclaimed how good it was, it was as if he was Charlie, and I was Willy Wonka handing him candy from the factory. Claiming he wouldn’t need any morning coffee after this delicious cup, he stepped out to make his way to the airport.

The same day Rasta discovered hot cocoa, he came over on his lunch break with a huge bag of freshly caught and cleaned conch meat. Some fishermen that knew him just gave him this tasty gift when he took a short walk along the beach. On an island surrounded by ocean water and sea creatures sometimes we get lucky and can purchase, or are given, a fresh catch of the day. Perks of his job I guess – some days he’s wrangling crocodiles and boa constrictors off the runway so planes don’t take nose dives, and other days you get free bags of seafood. 

Were you wondering if Rasta can cook? I’m not. He can’t. He brought the bag to me because between the two of us we knew who could try to execute an edible meal, though I use the term “edible” loosely, because we all remember how the evening with an octopus went. We talked about how he came to have this large bag of fresh seafood and how much we both love conchs. I’d never prepared any before but told him I had a plan. He said, “You always do, babe,” and off he went back to work. I went to work researching these creatures on the internet and how to prepare them. I had an idea that I would use half of them for ceviche, raw but cured in lime juice and used a great recipe from a restaurant on the island north of mine. The other half I quickly decided to make into a red curry with coconut milk served with rice.

After what felt like an entire afternoon of chopping and dicing, the ceviche was put into the refrigerator to get happy, and the overly spicy (as always) red conch curry was cooling down in its coconut sauce full of veggies. Both dishes turned out substantially better than the octopus did!