is food bought on a road trip -- road kill?

There was a day (back in the misty days of 2009) when I would drive to Manzanillo each week.

To pick up the mail at Mailboxes, Etc and to shop for food items I could not find in San Patricio Melaque.

No more. I can now get everything I need and almost everything I want in town simply by driving over to Hawaii. 

There is another reason I do not drive to Manzanillo much any more. I dislike the drive. If I am flying solo (which I usually am), I just want to get there and back home as quickly as I can. I spend more time driving than I do in the stores.

I now go to The Little Apple for only two reasons: 1) when I have dry cleaning and 2) to stop at the recently-renovated La Comer to find some sort of exotic food to ramp up my dinners.

Yesterday, I did both. After I picked up my holiday dry cleaning that I had dropped off three weeks ago, I stopped at La Comer where I have developed a shopping strategy. Produce to pasta to tea to frozen meat to cheese display. In and out. 15minutes max.

It was a good day. I scored with an English cucumber, some Sencha and Genmai Cha, a package each of bucatini and orzo (both from Rummo), and a wedge of imported Enmental. But the greatest score of all was amongst the frozen meat. It is featured at the top. 

Un conejo. A rabbit.

Packaged as it is, folded over on itself, it was not easy to identify. I learned to appreciate good rabbit and hare when I lived in England in the mid-1970s. The meat and game market in Oxford offered almost anything that hopped, flew, grunted, or rooted. It was easier to see what you were buying because the mammals and birds were still wearing their natural coverings.

Well, some were. Many of the rabbits were skinned and splayed in display cases. Looking a bit like a Peterbald. (I will kindly forego photographs of the market for those of you of a squeamish nature. For the same reason, I will skip a photograph of a living Peterbald.)

Now, that the rabbit is tucked away in the freezer, I need to come up with an appropriate use for its sacrifice. I will undoubtedly start by roasting it. A wire hanger over an open fire would add a rustic flare, but I suspect I will stick with the oven.

And then, what? Right now, I am leaning toward a rabbit risotto. But that will have to wait until I return from my trip to Yucatan wit my cousins Dan and Patty.

To tide me over, I bought a dozen take-out pieces of one of my guilty pleasures in Manzanillo. Monkey's chicken. The piquante version. In this case, it was the muy piquante version. And well-appreciated. If your chicken does not make your nose run, it died in vain. This one was put to a glorious purpose. 

Omar will stop by the house tonight on his weekend visit to Barra de Navidad. He is now at university (with in-person classes) in Autlan. He had best hurry, though, because I have cut a wide swath through yesterday's purchase.

Even though I dislike the drive, this particular trip proved to be quite successful.