A Meaty Adventure
on Tara's Ethiopian Adventure (Ethiopia), 05/Oct/2010 07:21, 34 days ago
Normally I am frustrated by the fact that I can only get meat in the local cafes and not vegetables but yesterday it was just the opposite. A new volunteer (Rod) had moved to Ambo and was interested to see if it is easy buy the local meat in the butchers to cook at home. Maggie (my house mate) is a vegetarian so I don't normally have the opportunity to cook meat at home so I thought I'd chose this opportunity to show Rod just how easy cooking meat at home is....However, on this occasion...it really wasn't so simple. I hadn't anticipated that in the aftermath of the 'Meskel' celebrations 'Siga Bets' (meat houses) would be running low on meat...add on top of that that it was a Wednesday and so Orthodox Christians wouldn't be eating meat and the stricter butchers refuse to sell it. This meant that there was only one butcher in town we could find with meat. The meat itself looked a little bit dried out having probably hung in the butchers for a few days but we couldn't really afford to be fussy. Unfortunately this butchers didn't have amincerand we had kind of got our hearts set on minced meat for a Bolognese sauce.We went on to another butchers/ bar where I knew they definitely had a mincer and we had a very entertaining discussion, in pigeon Amharic, with several members of staff as well as anyone from the general public who felt like adding their two pennies worth. We eventually managed to convey our dilemma and one kind member of staff decided to show us where we might be able to get meat AND a mincer. He took us back to the butchers we had originally visited and after discovering for himself they didn't have a mincer (he didn't believe me) he offered the mincing services of his establishment if we bought the meat. So... we chose the least dried out half kilo of meat we could find, packet it in newspaper and a plastic bag then headed back to the second butchers. I don't think the other members of staff thought it was such a good idea that we use their mincer, but our kind helper persisted and a crowd gathered for the entertainment that ensued. After a 10 minute wait a sparkling clean attachment to the mincer was discovered in the kitchen and brought to the deserted Siga Bet. Our kind helper then spent a while working out how to put the two pieces together and power it up and finally... ACTION!!... The meat was beautifully minced to the delight of the onlooking crowd. Unfortunately half the meat got stuck in the mincer (I think normally the meat is forced out by the addition of extra meat) and so we probably ended up with only a quarter of a kilo of meat compared to the original half kilo we bought. They bashed at it...pushed it...pulled at it but no amount of efforts seemed enough to rescue the meat that was stuck inside the contraption. However, it was still more than enough for our dinner and we were just so grateful for all they had done to help us. Getting some minced meat had certainly become an adventure! I just felt sorry for whoever would now be lumbered for the job of cleaning the mincer (especially as it wasn't even their meat!). They didn't ask for any money (I think they had all kind of enjoyed the drama that afternoon) but we thought it was only fair to give them a token tip to say thank you. All in all, we probably took the best part of an hour, and spent more than the normal amount of birr bumbling our way through that adventure but it was worth every minute and every birr for pure entertainment value! Our meal that evening was pretty tasty too!