"Clean Di Bone!"

If there is one thing I’ve learned from eating at Daddy’s friends and relatives’ houses is to be aware of the question, “You hungry?” Listen in on how eagerly the host asks the question and their response to your answer.

                If ask, “You sure?” after your response of “No”, be ready to make space in your stomach for whatever is made, especially if they’re getting set to light the stove. I loved driving around Daddy and meeting his people, especially because I got to eat out! But he would never tell the next person, “Hey, we already had lunch so we alright.” It’s a good thing that I had to swim later on in the day, or I would have had a belly as huge as his. There’s this thing with host that the visitor just can’t say no to.

                So in any case we end up eating maybe four lunches in a day. And this is where I get to thinking that the brain needs to seriously work on its effectiveness, “Greetings organs, especially stomach, due to recent influx of food from today’s errand running and people visiting, there will be halt on the digestive activity for the next 2 days, but let’s keep burning, k thanks!”

                Overtime, I developed the art of eating slowly to avoid, “Oh you finish already? Want some more?” The natural response to that is “Rhatid, no, mi belly full man, dammit!” And, of course, the host asks, “Why she eat so slow, she alright?” Response: “Just savoring everything man.” Thankfully Daddy started spreading out the visits when I got to high school, so we had lunch set and the necessity to navigate was done away with.

                But no matter whose house we were at we were never finished until the bones are clean. I didn’t have a problem with this because it is custom in the Millwood household too. Practice made perfect. In most if not all cases, the food tastes that great that you can’t avoid cleaning off the bones of the chicken, oxtail, cow foot, pig tail in the stew peas, or the stewed pork . This created my resolve of making food that you can’t resist waxing off.

                 And so, with my surplus of pork chops, I made us a dinner that ended in clean bones. YAY!

Cilantro Baked Pork chops with tomato and cilantro Spaghetti

Ingredients:

2 pork chops

½ c chopped cilantro

½ slice of lime

1 tbsp Allspice

1 tbsp sugar

½ fistful of spaghetti

1 Roma tomato - julienne

½ c coconut oil

Salt

Black& white pepper

The cooking:

 Pork Chops: the usual – marinate your chops in mixture of the lime juice, ¼ c of the chopped cilantro, 1 tsp of salt, 2 tsp of black, sugar and white pepper and the Allspice. Drizzle with coconut oil and put in the oven at 325 degrees and cook until dark. (If it just so happens that you feel festive, through the chops on the grill over charcoal or apple wood.)  

  

Spaghetti: spaghetti in tsp of coconut oil and a pinch of salt until al dente.

Sauté the tomato with the remaining chopped cilantro and salt and white pepper (1 pinch of each).

All together:

Mix spaghetti and sautéed tomato and cilantro and plate with the pork on the side and garnish with whole cilantro. I squeezed some of the other lime half over my entire plate… woke me up and soothed me all in one bite.

Cilantro Baked Pork chops with tomato and cilantro Spaghetti

“So in conclusion… (See below)”

Clean!

               

Cheers to a full  belly!

Til lata,

Gillian M.