We Eat Animals

With wings
With fins
With cold blood
With a shell
With many legs
With mammas
Eggs


WITH WINGS

The favorite one is turkey or gallipava, the only birds natives raised and tamed for eating them. Wild turkeys are bigger and have harder meat. Turkey is eaten with mole, crushed corn, chili sauce …with all the benefits of white meat and delicious!

Other birds had to be hunted to eat them, like Canahutli ducks. Natives waited for them hiding, so when the ducks came to the ground to eat gourds they could easily catch them with one hand. Women used to sell them on the streets saying: “cooked duck, tortilla with chili… duck, my soul, duck”.

Everything tastes well in a chili sauce! Even a parrot. But catching a big parrot like the ones in the Southeast is very difficult. It is better to wait for the female parrot to lay her eggs and before the parrots grow up, catch them and raise them as chickens. These parrots can save their lives if when they grow up they are funny and good talkers. Otherwise they will be feathered and cooked in rice.

During the months of August and September, in Mexico City the rhythmical voice of a woman could be heard saying: “mercarán chichicuilotitos vivos” (live chichicuilotes will be sold). Chichicuilotes were really called atzitzicuilotl. They are gray and round small birds with a long black peak and which live in the Mexican Valley during the rainy season. In lakes a kind of grass grows with very sticky husks. Natives waited for the chichicuilote to get stuck from its wings to catch it. Others reached them with nets. The birds which are not eaten are kept in houses to keep flies away.


WITH FINS

Cazon (baby shark) is a small shark from salty waters very much appreciated in Mexico. It is found in the main shark zones: Baja California, Veracruz, Quintana Roo, Sonora and Guerrero. They are delicious adobados (a special seasoning) and with corn tortillas.

But if a good sweet water fish is required, the white fish of Chapala, Jalisco and Patzcuaro, Michoacan can be recommended. Fray Bernandino de Sahagun describes it as a scaly fish with a white color which makes an excellent and digestible nice dish of fine eating and made for masters.

Not so digestible are the catfish if they are not poached and cleaned properly. They are very small fish, with few bones and yellow and very tasty meat, but their body is covered with a sticky substance which produces indigestion. That is why in Mexico it is said that after scraping and cleaning catfish, it has to be covered with ash and then rubbed with a brick the third day to remove all the black on it. In many places small fish which abound in the lakes of the Mexican Valley are called charales. They are usually eaten as hors d´oerves, dry, and sometimes with chili.

The lagoon big fish called Juil or Xoulin is often eaten in Mexico. It is dark and does not have a delicate taste as the white fish of Michoacan does. The juil is reproduced by hundreds, which makes it accessible protein for everyone.


WITH COLD BLOOD

What about a frog tamale? Catching a frog is a fun matter. They live in running and stagnant waters and they can be eaten without skin in a casserole with green chili or in a tamale. The same thing happens with the tadpoles which are teenage children of frogs.

More dangerous and harder to catch are lizards and alligators, which are very big crocodiles, slow on earth but fast in the water. Only the tail is eaten from these pre-historic animals. It is cut, skinned, the meat is separated and is dried under the sun. Then it can be cooked in many different ways.

There is another dragging animal with cold blood, much smaller, which is very much appreciated in the states of Morelos, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Veracruz and Chiapas. It is the iguana which is eaten without its head or extremities. In Oaxaca, Huave natives have an iguana tradition. They catch them alive, they tie their mouth and legs and they hang them until a shooting star appears in the sky which they say is an iguana’s tail. Not until then do they cook it and eat it. It is an honor to offer it on the day of the dead celebration.


WITH A SHELL

In Mexico there is a lot of shrimp from salty and sweet waters. They can be found in all sizes and shapes and are very popular. They are cooked in a soup and a few lemon drops are enough for seasoning this delicious meal. Lobster is cooked in the same way, which as well as shrimp can be eaten either cold or hot.


WITH MANY LEGS

Necessity rules…results can be amazingly beneficial. Energetic food, ants and wasps are sold in traditional markets of Zacatecas, Michoacan, Veracruz, Puebla, State of Mexico, and Oaxaca. Honey and other nutriments some insects store are used by natives; they are eaten as desserts, ground for sauces, in tortillas or kept in jars for treating respiratory diseases.
In cold regions of the central part of Mexico there is a kind of red ant called tlilazcatl, better known as escamoles or guijes, which build underground nests where humans get the larva. They are dried and then cooked with nopales in a chili broth or fried with butter for a taco tortilla.

In warm zones, the hormiga chicatana or tzicateras (another kind of ant) is bred. They are red voracious ants which only come out from their anthill once a year, during the rainy season, to collect food. They are caught by hunting strategists, agriculturers and natives of the region. They toast them and take them to the markets. With these ants, one of the tastiest season sauces of Veracruz is prepared. They are also eaten in Oaxaca and Chiapas. The heads and legs are too hot, so the rest has to be ground on a molcajete (a concave stone) along with some dry chiles de arbol, salt and some water.

Working honey ants collect honey in their stomach to feed their sisters. They are caught when full of honey, the bladder which contains it is removed and eaten as a candy. Recommendable for a kid with a cold!

On the coasts of Oaxaca a lot of honey is eaten, but along with its wasp. There is a big variety of edible wasps and on Puerto Escondido beaches, they are used to eating whole honeycombs of wasps called “zapotanas” or “guarachudas”. They burn the honeycomb on a comal (a round plate), they remove the crust and toast the inside which has little tender worms and a little honey. In Michoacan and Zacatecas there are other kinds of edible honeycombs which are also sold in markets.


WITH MAMMAS

Rich in protein, the meat of mammals can be cooked in many different ways. Ancient Mexicans hunted wild animals with a bow and arrow to get food. Then they started domesticating opossums, squirrels, monkeys and dogs.

In tropical forests and jungles of Veracruz lives the wild boar also called puerco del monte (mount pig) or pecarí. All its meat is eaten and the most appreciated part is the head. It has a gland in its back which segregates a smelly liquid; if it is no removed immediately and the cavity is washed, the meat gets smelly too and what could have been a delicious meal is wasted.

A traditional pre-Hispanic dish of Yucatán is deer, which is usually roasted in barbacoa or cut and seasoned with chile habanero, radish, coriander, orange juice and salt.

In Chiapas, ocelot (tiger) meat is traditionally eaten. Fray Bernardino de Sahagun tells natives ate it roasted “…it is a good food for the ones who lose their brains and for the ones who have fever and feel cold”. The also ate it to recover energy and get strength.

Tuzas have not been rejected as food. They are similar to rats but bigger, with round and small ears and a short tail. They have long curved nails, with which they dig holes on the ground. They eat plants and roots, that is why their meat is soft and nutritious. They have a very good flavor and when they are roasted , they smell delicious too.

Dog has not been eaten for many years, but ancient Mexicans castrated and bred them to be eaten. The favorite on was the bald dog or xoloitzcuintli, a big dog with little hair which was an endangered species and which is protected since 1945. During the Colony, Spaniards took bald dogs as food supplies on their sea expeditions. This name is often confused with tepezcuintli which means in Nahuatl “the dog that comes from the mount”, which is really a big rodent that lives near rivers and eats fruit and wild seeds. Its meat is very much appreciated, butchers buy tepezcuintlis from river fishermen. They never buy them alive, they remove the skin and parts and sell them in pieces. It is cooked in water with salt and seasoned with chile ancho or is eaten roasted.

Squirrel is no longer eaten, and brushes are not made from their tails anymore. In ancient times, it was cooked with epazote. The head was skinned, legs and tail were removed and it was cooked with its skin in order to keep its meat white. Once cooked, it was skinned and seasoned to be eaten.

Deer hunting is prohibited, so its meat has been replaced by pork in restaurants. Formerly, it was skinned and the meat was dried in pieces on the fireplace. It was left to be cooled down and covered with salt or chili.

Opossums and raccoons were also eaten. The first ones have the size of a cat, long and smooth hair and feed themselves with insects and fruit and are completely harmless. They are eaten with mole, frijoles and corn tortillas. Raccoon is a season dish because it only comes out of its burrow during the Winter. In Veracruz it is usually cooked in a green salsa made with green tomatoes and chiles cuarezmeños.

A difficult chore is catching armadillos. They have the size of a rabbit and are covered by a shell which allows them to “turn into balls” in order to roll down the hill when they are in danger. The shell is removed for eating them. They are emptied and half-cooked with water and salt to finish the cleaning. Then are rinsed with cold water and cooked with a blend of herbs until all the grease comes out. They are covered with a paste made with chilies and vinegar. In Yucatán, they are seasoned with achiote, wrapped in banana leaves.


EGGS

Nowadays in all the Mexican Republic hen eggs are eaten, but in some towns turkey eggs are also very much appreciated.

Eating turtle eggs has been prohibited for many years now, for obvious reasons but not the mosquito eggs. The Axayacatl is a water mosquito which is caught with nets and toasted to be eaten. It lays white eggs which are called ahuautli. In order to get enough of them to be sold in the market, tule trees are cultivated on lake edges. There the mosquito lays its eggs and after a month the bunches are taken out and aired. Before eating them, they are toasted and dried. They are recommended with chili and tortillas or with lemon juice.