In December my Mama and Papa rented the village's "market stall" as a way to earn income. Each day they baked bread, served hot tea, sold raw food from their gardens, and occasionally cooked meals to sell to the villagers. On their last night they had a final fundraiser we call "closing of the stall." Excessive amounts of lap lap and rice were cooked and sold in single serving sizes.
My uncle went out hunting "flying fox" (BIG bats) to be served with the laplap. The night before the fundraiser he went with a flashlight, slingshot, and small stones to find us some meat. First, their hair is burned off by passing them through a fire. Special leaves, called "leaf laplap" are used to cook things in stones so Bubu Madeline prepared the leaves and put some island cabbage inside them.
The flying fox were then added on top and a hot stone was added to the middle. Next, Mama sqeezed coconut milk over the food making lots of steam.
The parcel of cabbage, flying fox, and coconut milk is bundled and put between hot stones to bake along with the lap laps.
After about 2 hours cooking in these stones the laplap and flying fox are done! They are cut and portioned into individual servings to sell. Each flying fox is cut in half and joined with either laplap banana or manioc (aka cassava) and cabbage. Each is sold for 100 vatu which is about $1.00 to us in the U.S.
Flying fox meat has a very VERY strong smell and leaves you burping up that smell for the rest of the day. Some of the locals don't even like eating it. I have tried it twice, cooked in two different ways. Both times swallowing my single bite was almost impossible. Luckily at Mama and Papa's closing of stall we also had pig and fish to choose from. Yay!
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