Foolish Food Follies

How many VSOs does it take to figure out what is and isn’t milk? Jo and I really needed a brew so we decided treat ourselves at Balmaya. A nice big pot of tea arrived with a milk jug delicately covered with a cotton doily thing with beads on to keep the flies out (juice arrives in the same way). Great proper milk! Not the powdered stuff, not condensed/tinned milk but white stuff from an actual cow! But alas no, it was a kind of beige pinky colour. Jo immediately decided she couldn’t drink tea with that liquid, I bravely tried it, but Jo was right. We sent the tea back, much to the dismay of the owner who informed us that it wasn’t condensed milk (our first guess) and she only liked tea with pigs milk. She didn’t serve tea with cows milk or powdered milk as not many people liked it (hard to believe when you are surrounded by ex pats!) so we had to beg to differ and vowed never to order tea again.
I was silently wondering how difficult it actually was to milk a pig and also how come the milk was approximately the same colour as a pig? It’s the only live animal I have seen in Freetown (down at the Bay slums, by Connaught Hospital), well apart from the poor unfortunate sheep that was baa-ing away outside Monoprix supermarket last week. I had just bought some cheese from the butchers counter next to several hanging carcasses, so I knew its fate. I dread to think how a supermarket humanly slaughters! Anyway back to milk. So Jo and I were relaying this story to friends a few days later and only to be reliably informed that it was ‘Peak’ milk (a kind of tinned milk) and it dawned on me that I had actually believed for about 3 days that people really did milk pigs!!!

Yesterday I bought two large snappers and today I put them on the chopping board and realised that I had totally forgotten how to gut and bone a fish! A skill I’d acquired at 11 sea fishing with my Dad, but I certainly don’t have it anymore! This is why fishmongers were invented! Having a fridge has made me more adventurous with food but having spent half an hour fighting with the slimy things and being totally grossed out by cutting their enormous heads off and impailing myself on their sharp spines, I’m not sure that its worth it although the fish was very tasty. In future, I'll stick to massive tiger prawns (12 for £1!).