Ecce Porcus

If the subtitle is wrong, it’s no surprise. I got a “D” in Latin.

This is a momentous week. One of the pastors from my church contacted me last night. They have a cafe, and because of the bad economy, they had to let the chef go. Guess what they want me to do?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. My campaign of global food domination is finally launched!

They need some people to show up and cook, and they need recipes. I’m somewhat afraid I will kill half the congregation with arteriosclerosis, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

Mmmm…eggs.

All kinds of warped ideas are rolling around in my head. I have a few dishes that are so good they will bring people to church just for the food. Maybe I can get those onto the menu. If I can get Trinity Church to sell my cheesecake, flan, and pizza, I’m sure the people in the neighborhood will notice. There is no good cheesecake anywhere on earth, and good pizza is rare in Miami. Good flan is not that hard to find, but good COCONUT flan, which is what I make, is another matter.

The nice thing about desserts is that I could make them at home, at my convenience, and bring them in and leave them. You could sell a slice of my cheesecake for two bucks, and there are twelve slices in a cake. They could keep it in the fridge and bring out slices as needed. I don’t know if they’d make any money, but I’m sure they’d break even, and don’t even tell me the women in that neighborhood wouldn’t come back for more.

Oh, baby. Strawberry croissants. Maybe I finally have an excuse to use my recipe. Strawberry croissants and pain au chocolat.

I guess I would not be able to eat much of this stuff, but I would enjoy putting my curious gift to work for God. I am still losing fat, due to his generosity.

Because I cook Cuban food and Southern soul food, I know how to make a number of cheap but excellent dishes. That’s a blessing. I could make congri for pennies a pound. Maybe we could serve it with caja-china-style pernil, which is a pork butt roasted with mojo. I could brine it to take the stink out. It would be excellent, and you can get pork butts for a dollar a pound.

I wonder if they’d let me do ham hocks. I love ham hocks, but some black people have a thing about pork these days. “Slave food” and so on. Of course, most of the blacks at my church are from Haiti and the other islands, so maybe they haven’t gotten all stuck up about pork yet.

The church is putting on its three-part Christmas musical these days, so on Sunday, I brought food for the cast. Macaroni and cheese and my startling Unauthentic White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Chili. That’s what got me the call from the pastor.

This should be a blast. I better go meet with him.