I haven’t cooked any meat on Isla, beyond reheating chicken. Buying meat at the City Deli was intimidating (you can’t see what you’re buying), I only just started going to Maz and so I haven’t explored meat buying options there too closely, and I’ve been out of propane for ages and unable to cook.

Well, those of you on Facebook know that my propane was refilled last night, so I can cook! AND Isla has a brand new sparkling clean butcher shop right by the basketball court. I headed over there first thing this morning to check out what they have.

I’m still fairly new to the world of meat purchasing outside of nice neat supermarket packages, or, rather, I haven’t done it in about twenty years, since I was cooking and shopping for my dad regularly. So all that to say, I had no idea what I was looking at in the display case. I therefore said that I wanted pork and chicken breasts and was told to come back around 2:00.

So that’s what I did and there was more stuff in the display case. I bought 1/4 kilo of chicken breasts (0.5 pounds, which turned out to be two BIG breasts, enough for four meals at least). I was offered some choice for the pork, but the only cut that I know is chuleta (chop) so that’s what I asked for, also 1/4 kilo, which netted me a frozen giant bone-in chop.

The chop’s in my freezer and I’m going to cook up all the chicken today because it already has a bit of an odour I’m not used to. I’m sure it’s fine, but I don’t want to delay cooking it.

Total cost? 40 pesos for the chicken, 50 for the pork, for a grand total of 7.25CAD or 6.38USD… I’m going to have a heart attack at my first grocery bill back in Canada.