[Sca-cooks] OOP - Just another trip to the supermarket - long...

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Hullo, the list!

On a trip to one of our local large markets earlier this evening, I 
discovered several cans of sopa de garrobo on the shelf. This seems 
to be canned iguana soup, specifically from the brown iguana, which 
is a delicacy compared to its no-account, green-trash cousin, the 
green iguana. Who knew?

Anyway, when we got home I did a little digging and found this old 
Washington Post article online at 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A26156-2003Apr14&notFound=true 
(which I include here because registration is required). The Long 
Island company mentioned near the end of the article is the one 
distributing the stuff I saw in cans earlier this evening. I guess 
you really _can_ get almost anything in New York.

No, we didn't buy any.

>Where the Lizard Is King
>Area Markets Satisfy Salvadoran Demand for Iguana Meat
>
>  By Krissah Williams
>  Washington Post Staff Writer
>  Tuesday, April 15, 2003; Page E01
>
>  Behind the meat counter at Mercadito Ramos II, Jaime Medina lifted 
>a bag of dark-pink iguana meat to the silver scale. The headless, 
>skinless lizard registered 3.3 pounds. "Forty dollars," Medina said 
>in Spanish.
>
>Since the iguanas began arriving at the Langley Park store last 
>month, Medina, a 23-year-old Salvadoran who runs the store for his 
>father, has sold them at $12.50 per pound to Central Americans 
>hungry for a taste of home. There the meat is a delicacy, a cure-all 
>and an aphrodisiac.
>
>"They are a traditional food," he said. "People eat them when they 
>are ill. They are like a total energy vitamin. People hear about it 
>by word of mouth, and they are buying them."
>
>  The pointy-faced lizards are bred on farms in El Salvador, 
>shrink-wrapped and then shipped frozen in cardboard boxes lined with 
>plastic foam. In Central America, those with green scales are called 
>iguanas, and those with the brown scales and tastier meat -- the 
>ones people prefer to eat -- are called garrobos. The meat tastes 
>like chicken but is a little tougher and has less fat.
>
>The brown-scaled iguanas started arriving sporadically last year in 
>about a dozen local Latino grocery stores, a few hundred boxes at a 
>time. They sold out within days, store owners said. "It is very 
>expensive, but once people know we have them, they buy them," said 
>Carlos A. Castro, owner of Todos Hispanic Supermarket in Woodbridge.
>
>  Encouraged by the response, ranchers in El Salvador are gearing up 
>for bigger shipments to this region, according to officials from the 
>Salvadoran Embassy.
>
>Mercadito Ramos buys its frozen iguanas for $9 per pound from 
>Distribuidora Cuscatlan Inc., located in a busy enclave of ethnic 
>food distributors in Northeast Washington. Cuscatlan buys the 
>iguanas for $6 per pound directly from ranchers in El Salvador.
>
>  At $12.50, the meat sold at Mercadito is pricey, but some say it is 
>worth it. "It's better than Viagra," said Silver Spring resident 
>Herbert Hernandez, 24, who moved here from San Vicente nine years 
>ago.
>
>  "If you are feeling ill for a few days and you want to recover 
>quickly, it is the number one vitamin," said Salvadoran Alicia 
>Chicas, 49, manager of Mercadito. "My parents thought it was 
>strange, but one day I was sick. I had asthma. Someone gave me 
>garrobo soup, and it really helped me get better."
>
>At the Mercadito meat counter, Hyattsville resident Yolanda Roque, a 
>Guatemalan with a floppy blond ponytail, glanced past the seasoned 
>fajita meat, Salvadoran chorizo, pescado seco -- a traditional salty 
>dried fish -- and foot-long cow tongue before stopping to read the 
>black-and-white printout that said "Desde El Salvador Garrobo." 
>Translation: Iguana from El Salvador.
>
>Examining the iguana meat, Roque said she had heard from a 
>Salvadoran co-worker at a laundry in Baltimore that it was sold at 
>Mercadito. "I asked a friend to bring me two garrobos from El 
>Salvador, but they didn't allow her to bring them into the U.S.," 
>said Roque, 48, although she fretted over the price. "When I heard 
>Mercadito Ramos was selling them, I decided to come by."
>'You Eat That Thing?'
>
>
>
>There was a time when iguanas nearly overran El Salvador, roaming 
>the hot, arid streets of the cities and climbing trees along the 
>eastern coast. There were so many iguanas in San Miguel that 
>Salvadorans started calling men from there garroberos, after the 
>iguanas, said Enilson Solano, counselor for economic affairs at the 
>Embassy of El Salvador.
>
>"Most people will look at an iguana and say, 'You eat that thing?' . 
>. . [But] people in El Salvador eat so many," said Castro, who is 
>from San Salvador. "The poor little creatures almost disappeared. 
>That put a damper on consumption in El Salvador. When I was a kid, 
>we could see them everywhere."
>
>  Castro, 48 and an animal lover, said he was often the reluctant kid 
>in the bunch when his cousins would go to the Pacific coast to hunt 
>iguanas in caves or trees. They would set traps at cave openings. 
>"At my grandmother's ranch, when they saw an iguana taking sun on 
>high branches, someone would climb the tree and knock them down. 
>They had dogs ready to catch them," Castro said.
>
>"When I was 12, I would go with my cousin to the city. He would hit 
>them with a slingshot. They would fall, and he would eat them. He 
>would cut off the head and legs and would peel off the scales and 
>pull the tough skin back," Castro said.
>
>Traditionally, iguana meat is cut up; mixed with water, tomatoes, 
>potatoes, onion, garlic and traditional Central American herbs; and 
>simmered for two hours, creating a thick stew. Many also like to eat 
>wild iguana eggs with rice.
>
>"My dad, when I was young, used to catch big iguanas with eggs 
>inside," Castro said. "He used to cut them open one inch in the 
>tummy and get the eggs out. They are very delicious. Then he put 
>three stitches in the iguana and let them go."
>
>  Mothers fed iguana meat to their sick children, as one would 
>chicken noodle soup. It was also said to cure hangovers and to keep 
>the elderly strong.
>
>Eventually the number of wild iguanas dwindled so much that the El 
>Salvador government made it illegal to catch them.
>'Iguana High'
>
>
>
>Salvadoran ranchers first spotted a large iguana export market in 
>the United States about 1993, after American children fell in love 
>with the T. rex and raptors in Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park," 
>said the embassy's Solano. But the business of exporting live 
>iguanas to U.S. pet stores peaked years ago.
>
>More recently, the Salvadoran food companies that built processing 
>plants to clean and package iguana meat also have developed massive 
>iguana ranches, Solano said. . Ranchers are gearing up for more 
>exports to the United States.
>
>Salvadoran executive Max Novoa is one of the businessmen who decided 
>to export iguana food products here. Novoa, whose family owns 
>Arrocera San Francisco, which is one of the largest 
>food-manufacturing companies in El Salvador, spent a year working 
>with a food technician to perfect a canned recipe for iguana soup.
>
>"It's very traditional, with vegetables and no preservatives," Novoa 
>said in a telephone interview. "There is a lot of manual processing, 
>regional spices and a lot of [iguana] meat. It's not something you 
>can [mass-produce]. We're bringing a little to start and see how it 
>goes."
>
>  The soup, sold under Arrocera's Doña Lisa label, will be 
>distributed by Long Island, N.Y.-based All Foods. Novoa, who splits 
>his time between New York and El Salvador, is part owner of the 
>distribution company. Next month, the canned soup is to begin 
>arriving in stores in the Washington area, which has hundreds of 
>thousands of Central American immigrants and more than 100 Latino 
>grocery stores, and in other cities including San Francisco and New 
>York.
>
>  In his country, iguanas are viewed as a "natural energy source," 
>Novoa said. "Its cells have the ability to regenerate easily. If its 
>tail is cut off, it grows back."
>
>  "There is some belief that cold-blooded animals purify the blood of 
>hot-blooded animals, like humans," he added.
>
>Novoa has little hope that iguana will appeal to large numbers of 
>native North Americans. Instead, his plan is to ship his iguana soup 
>to Asian countries, where he said people share similar beliefs and 
>tastes regarding reptiles. He is working with a food broker in Hong 
>Kong to export the canned soup to mainland China, where snake is a 
>delicacy.
>
>  "Iguana high. They call it the natural Viagra," Novoa said. 
>"There's a market."
>
>Staff writer Luz Lazo contributed to this report.

-- 






"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la 
brioche!" / "If they have no bread, you have to say, let them eat 
brioche."
	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, "Confessions", pub 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
	-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry 
Holt, 07/29/04