So as I wrote before, my family killed the pig. They asked if Lauren and I wanted to watch the actually pig-killing, but we gracefully declined. But just because we didn’t see it, doesn’t mean we didn’t hear it. In case anyone’s curious, pigs scream when their throats are cut and the screams are loud enough to wake a person up.
By the time we were awake, the pig was very dead and very much in the patio:
The next step was to move it over to a wooden platform where the cleaning process could begin. Cleaning the pig meant running a hose over it while my host sister Lesslye and the neighbor kid Cosme scraped the skin with knives to get the dirt off. Nicoll joined in with her nails:
Mid-way through this process my host dad peeled off a chunk
of skin and offered it to me with a plate of salt. Apparently, the pig had been blowtorched for
about an hour before hand and this was the classic Peruvian first bite. Well, regardless of your gut instincts, you
never really know unless you try, right?
Fun Peruvian fact: One of the ears of the pig goes to the
person who actually struck the killing blow, in this case of father of my host
dad.
Besos!
Addendum: May 27th, 2014. My host family doesn’t have a refrigerator,
so for the past two weeks or so the pig has been hanging in our kitchen, at
perfect forehead –hitting height I might add, treated with herbs and salt and
drying. But entirely successful because
yesterday I saw my host mom picking out the maggots from the slowly spoiling
meat. I will be abstaining from pork for
the foreseeable future.
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