When I arrived on Bequia in the 70s fresh meat wasn’t easily obtainable and, as I liked meat, I found this a sad state of affairs! Shops back then sold dreadful beef – black-looking lumps of frozen cubes that looked and tasted unappetizing – and that was IT. Dried, heavily salted hams were sold in bags, and there were tinned hams, but neither appealed to me; I wanted proper hams for baking, or pork chops, and they simply didn’t exist.
I lacked local knowledge. People on Bequia raised their own animals, and therefore occasionally had meat on the table come Sunday. If a cow was being slaughtered (which wasn’t often!), word-of-mouth ensured that every piece was sold. The first time I bought local beef was memorable; my efforts to cook the meat were dismal to say the least, and for quite some time I had terrible cravings for the kind of meat I had grown up with in Canada. I learned to cook and appreciate fish, but the longing for juicy steaks and chops stayed with me for quite some time.
I was chatting with Momma Simmons one day when Mac’s cousin Mabel shouted, “Satan get behind me!” from the road. It was a Saturday, and Mabel was on her way to the Seventh Day Adventist church. Mac’s father was in the process of butchering a pig and, as Seventh Day Adventists don’t eat pork, Mabel was expressing herself in a joking manner. Some of Bluesy’s fresh pork would be seasoned and cooked for Sunday lunch, the rest frozen for another time. I was fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time, and was given a chunk of the pig to carry home. Mac roasted the pork and it was the BEST I have ever eaten, so good that more than 4 decades later I can still almost taste it!
I’m afraid our local pork has spoiled me for life. At times it can be a little chewy, but the taste of meat that has never been subjected to anything other than natural food for growth is special. A local pork roast is delicious and so is stewed pork, and I often pound boneless pieces in order to make schnitzel for my German-born husband. A really special treat is a whole pig roasted on a spit, but that’s too much work for home cooking! When I shop for groceries on the mainland I always load up on chops and roasts to freeze when I get home; it’s very tasty, and, now that we are older, pork appeals to us much more than red meat.
One day I spotted some beautiful THICK pork chops at Massey Foods on the mainland, and grabbed a few packages. They would be perfect for grilling, and I knew they would be nice and juicy! In my haste I didn’t notice that the chops had been imported from the U.S.A., and we were sorely disappointed when we tucked into our meals that evening. Both Nik and I immediately stopped eating the tender pork chops – they tasted of chemicals, and, in our opinion, were unfit for human consumption! I’m afraid the rest of the imported chops were fed to the dogs – we simply couldn’t stand the taste of them. We would rather exercise our jaws with chewier local meat than subject ourselves to imported and (by far!) inferior pork, and I now always make sure that whatever meat I am buying is locally raised.
However, I DO buy imported bacon, and, like my English grandmother, I save the drippings religiously. I have noticed something rather peculiar over the years; a lot of Bequia people who profess they don’t eat pork tend to make an exception when it comes to bacon, and I can’t say I blame them – life is definitely better with bacon!
