The Carniceria

Not too far from our house, there's a carniceria that I've been wanting to check out for some time now. I always wonder what kind of meats the sell there. Well, today was my day to find out. Mrs. BigKat was out with PrincessKat, so I took the boys with me.

We walked up to the front of the store and could see the tortilla machine cranking out fresh tortillas. That was a good sign. Once we got inside, it was easy to find the butcher, just walk straight to the back of the store. As we headed to the back, I heard something that I didn't quite expect:

Loud rap music with really bad words!

I was a bit surprised. I think that's officially the worst language that my children have ever been exposed to. Lots of N-'s and S-'s and other things. Much different than Safeway music. Fortunately, it didn't seem like the boys really noticed. They were too busy holding their noses because of the 'bad smell'. You know what the 'bad smell' was? It was the tortillas that they were making up front. How they could convert fresh tortillas into a 'bad smell', I have no idea. It smelled pretty good to me! I started browsing the meats while my boys looked around with one hand on their noses.

There were a lot of pounded flat beef cuts. Not a lot of pork, though. I asked the guy if there was any pork shoulder, and he said no. They had a big pile of carnitas in the cooked meat section, so I asked for some of that. He walked over and gave me a sample. And when I say sample, I mean a hunk of pork the size of my fist. Now how come they can't give out servings like that at Costco! I tried it and thought it was pretty good, so I ordered a pound. The guy puts the meat into a box. Then he says 'Hey! I have something else for you!' and puts this fried object into the box with the carnitas. He pulls another one out and hands it to me. I take a bite out of it. It tastes like a humongous pork rind. I ask him what it was that I just ate. He tells me it's a pork belly. That's right, I basically just took a bite out of a piece of 1 inch thick, deep fried bacon. I had a couple more bites of it, but couldn't finish it. I honestly can't imagine how anyone could eat a whole piece of fried bacon the size of a spare rib.

Well, I went to go pay for my stuff and found the boys at the candy display (without their hand on their noses. I guess they'd become accustomed to the smell). They were looking for something that they could buy. I decided that I'd be nice and get them something. But it seemed like 90% of the candy display (which wasn't very big) was gum.

 

'Dad! Can I get this?'

'No, it's gum'

'How about this?'

'No, it's gum'

'Dad! What's this?'

'Gum'

'How about this?'

'Gum'

 

I finally found some little chocolate bars at the top, so I got one for each boy. We also picked up a stack of tortillas and went home.

Mrs. BigKat and I ate the carnitas and tortillas for lunch. The carnitas were pretty good. Not great, I think I can make better pork on my barbecue, but still pretty good. But the tortillas were fantastic! I kept eating the meat just so I'd have something to put on the tortilla (which I really shouldn't have done. I ate way too much for lunch). And the stack we got was huge! It costed $1.50, and I think there were probably at least 60 of them. Definitely going to have to go there next time we make any kind of mexican food.

Anyhow, I guess there's not really much of a point to this story, other than it's kind of fun to be able to find such interesting places right near our home. Makes me wonder if there's anything else in our town that I'm missing out on.