Relax Man, I Don’t Eat Pork

Posted on October 28, 2008
Filed Under Newlywed | 7 Comments

I’ve decided that I love to cook.

It was a bit of a late-in-life kind of discovery but I have come to the realization that I love to be in the kitchen. (Relax feminist super heroes; I went to college, have a job, my own bank accounts and I speed when I drive.)

It’s not that I didn’t know how to cook before; it’s just that I never had to. As a child your parents cook for you and in college you eat pizza and Taco Bell for four years (maybe five years for some of you reading this), and then one of two things happen after you graduate: you move home and start eating your parents’ food again or you get your own place and end up befriending all the Chinese delivery boys.

About six months before my wedding I decided that I was going to learn how to cook (partly to please my bay-bee and partly out of desperation that I wouldn’t have anything to eat myself.) Later, when I told The Boss what I was up to, in preparation to become a stellar wife, he confessed a little secret to me. In the six months leading up to our wedding he focused on making his teeth whiter in order to become a better husband.

I love that guy.

Back in the kitchen, I started with the basics. My mom gave me a few pointers but mostly observed from afar so I could figure things out for myself – - you know, kind of like when you give a 2 year old the toy blocks to put in the corresponding holes and they keep jamming the square into the circle but you sit back and let them grow and learn on their own?

I picked up a Martha Stewart cookbook from the checkout line at Whole Foods and started to cook one meal each week. I even invited friends and family over to join me for dinner to rate my cooking on a scale 9 to 10 (9 being good and 10 being great).

Things were going pretty well and I started to gain confidence in my culinary abilities.

After cooking nearly every meal in the Martha cookbook I started to get an itch for another book of recipes. I realized I had a problem when I went go to CVS for toothpaste and wound up at the register with four cooking magazines and the Vidalia Chop Wizard. I told myself to slow down but it was like I couldn’t control myself.

I had to learn how to cook by any means necessary.

Sensing a slightly compulsive need in me to learn the craft, my bff Tina got me an Indian cookbook for my birthday/Eid. It was a monstrosity of a book. Color photographs, detailed instructions, nutritional value for each meal – the darn thing had about 300 pages and weighed like six pounds!

And then I got scared.

I gently placed the book in a bookshelf, out of fear it could give me diarrhea just from reading it, and quietly ate at home and Corner Bakery for a few weeks.

After the wedding we spent the next six weeks eating out, ordering in, getting pity food from our parents (who didn’t want me to cook or the boy to starve) and filling up on Air Heads.

The Boss was out of town for about a week when I decided that I was going to face my one-time passion turned horror and knock his Air Penny 2s off with my skillful cooking when he came home.

Armed with a bookmark of ingredients for seven days of meals I got from a Rachel Ray magazine, I hit the grocery store. Since I am completely unfamiliar with the layout, it took me nearly two hours to do what my mom could have done in 30 minutes.

I wandered up and down each aisle at least four times looking for the same thing but refused to ask anyone for help. I had about 90 percent of what I needed before I decided to quit. The only things left were a few gourmet items I had to pick up elsewhere and the meat. Since we only eat halal (or zabiha meat) I had to go to a local Muslim market.

Totally exhausted, and parched, I kept my focus and headed to the Halal grocery store, which is about a 15- minute drive from my house. I scratched the remainder of the ingredients off my list with ease: ground beef, chicken breast, beef strips (in place of bacon), chicken and beef broth and sandwich meats.

But my meal for Monday said I’d be cooking pork chops with grape salad. What type of meat could I cook in place of the pork? Since I would season and cook the meat the same way, I needed something that was comparable in size and texture and could withstand the same amount of heat. Lamb maybe?

Still new to the game, I waited to be helped.

“Hi. I’m trying to follow this recipe and it calls for pork so I was wondering what you’d suggest I use in place of it.”

Blank stare.

Maybe he didn’t hear me. He does look a little old.

“HI. I’m trying to FOLLOW THIS RECIPE and it calls FOR PORK. I was wondering what I could use INSTEAD.”

Blank, angry stare.

Seriously. What’s good with this cat?

“If you look at my recipe…” I turned the paper toward him– maybe he was a visual learner.

Then suddenly in a loud Indian accent he blurts out, “VE DAN’T SELLS PARK!”

“Wait, what? No. I’m…”

“THARE’S NO PARK IN DIS SHAP!”

What the hell was going on here? I just needed something comparable to the meat. I didn’t want “park.”

“I don’t want pork. As you can see my recipe…”

Oh man he’s starting to look really pissed.

“Look sir, see how you have beef “bacon” strips that…”

“THAT’S NAT REAL BAK-ON!”

“No, I know. But it’s like the same cut of meat but from a cow. So similarly, I need to find a replacement meat, in place of the pork, so I can make this at home.”

“IF YOU VANT PARK YOU GO SOME-VHERE ELSE!”

The butcher and I just stared at each other in absolute horror. Then with a look of total disgust, he furrowed his brow, curled his bottom lip and broke the silence, “Just take the Veal.”

After the whole ordeal was done, I didn’t know whether to laugh or leave without paying.

I saw my mom and sister a few days later and relayed what happened. I knew they would understand.

“You should have known better” is what my mom said.

Me!? Why should I have known better!?

“Because you talk so fast in this American accent and they don’t understand. You went to a Halal store and started talking about pork.”

Thankfully the veal worked out. Proudly, I told The Boss about the hard work I put in and how the old Indian man finally understood what I was trying to explain.

“But you know he still thinks you wanted the pork, right?”

“What?”

“Yeah, he thinks you just settled for the veal.”

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