Men's Group Celebrates Their Women

How else? By consuming ice-cold beer and having a Bar-B-Q, BBQ, Barbecue, Barbeque, Bar-B-Que, or Barbie. And, as usual, Wikipedia, the online source of all knowledge, has a large chunk of information about the subject at (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbecue).

Anyway, I think it was Craig who originally came up with the idea, but managed to get enough cohorts of a like mind, that the Corozal Men's Group was motivated enough to actually put on the bash.

Craig and I went shopping for most of the big items, meat, fish, veggies, and other cooking supplies.

This was intended to be a photo-documentary of not only the shopping (although that would be interesting in and of itself), but the cooking and of course, the consuming. Unfortunately, that sort of "clicked" to a halt when my camera quit working for the evening. Well, that and perhaps a beer or two too many may have helped with the confusion factor.

So, to document the shopping experience. Since Craig and Mae's maroon beast was still in the shop being morphed into a metallic green beast, courtesy of one of Corozal's best Earl Sheib paint shop imitators, I took the Isuzu, newly out of the mechanic's shop itself, after having gotten a new clutch, body mounts all around, A/C fanbelt, and turn signal short all sorted out, and picked up Craig for our morning adventure of speed-shopping.

Our first stop was to Jud's Meat Shop and Deli, since we didn't want to take a chance on them selling out the 10 pounds of baby ribs we had reserved the day before.

Craig In A Determined Pose Outside Jud's

I have to say, I do like Jud's Meats. It's always clean inside, and their ground beef with the peppers and spices they add into it when they grind it, is something special.

Here's the proprietor, showing Craig the rack of ribs we were going to have cut into individual portions. Nice looking piece of meat.

Craig Checking Out the Goods

A couple of things on display in the store was this armadillo, and a wood snake. Not just a wood snake (if there is such a thing) but, a wooden snake. Close-up, it looks pretty authentic.

Armadillo's, Oh My

Snakes, More Oh My

From Jud's, it was just a hop, skip and jump up to D's Supermarket, where we bought a whole batch of stuff. Here's Craig checking out a bottle of coconut rum - he eventually opted for the cheaper Traveller's brand (which took a fatal dive onto the concrete steps once we arrived at Jim's), and then, there's me showing how we buy eggs in Corozal. Eggs, regardless of size, sell for about $0.30 BZD each no matter where you shop.

In the Liquor Isle

Eggs-zactly

Here's Amelita (on the right) checking our purchases for us. She is one of the few checkers in town that always gives you a receipt - a nice touch.

Amelita (right) and Her Helper

From D's, we hotfooted it over to Frank's Meat Products. This is another favorite meat shop. We get some great cuts of beef and pork here. Today, we're buying a fillet of Chilean salmon, farm-raised, but mighty tasty. I know, not in the same league as the northwest salmon, or even Copper River salmon, but when you can't get that, the Chilean variety will do wonders.

Craig Describing What He Wants

The Girls Digging For It

And, here it is, on the scale, looking mighty good, They keep it in black plastic, even in the freezer, otherwise, exposure to light down here will kill the color. That fillet cost $78.00 BZD, and was worth every penny.

Weighing the Salmon

Our final stop on this shopping trip was to the Corozal Market. Craig had a whole laundry-list of veggies to get, including ten pounds of potatoes. He wanted red potatoes, but they've just gone out of season, so we got whites. We live and breath with the veggie seasons here, not like Safeway, or Piggly Wiggly up north.

Craig Describing the Veggies He Needs

While we were shopping, we were found by Wendy, Roger's wife. They're just newly returned from five weeks in Britain, and glad to be back.

Wendy Congratulating Us On A Fine Shopping Job

Here's the stall vendor at the market. Her little girl was very much interested in the camera. So much so, she couldn't keep her fingers off of it and somehow goobered the settings, which I didn't discover till we got to Jim's for the party. When I couldn't get the trigger to fire at all. Bummer.

Peter and Sylvia's Daughter A Market Stall Vendor

and Her Young Inquisitive Daughter

So, that is why this is just a speil about shopping and not about the celebration as such.
I did get the camera working again, this morning. Only after I took out the batteries, reinstalled them, and reset the camera to it's factory defaults. Wow!