Page:A Study of Mexico.djvu/107

got) to soak overnight; the use of the lime being to soften the corn. When it is desired to use it, the grain is taken out and ground by hand on the stone and by the roller before mentioned, into a kind of paste, and then slightly dried or baked on an earthen tray or pan over a small fire. Everybody in Mexico is said to eat tortillas and their preparation, which is always assigned to the women, seems to employ their whole time, "to the exclusion of any care of the dwelling, their children, or themselves." Foreigners, especially Americans, find them detestable. Another standard article of Mexican diet is boiled beans (frijoles). Meat is rarely used by the laborers, but, when it is obtainable, every part of the animal is eaten. Peppers, both green and red, mixed with the corn-meal or beans, are regarded as almost indispensable for every meal, and, when condensed by cooking, are described by one, who obviously speaks from experience, as forming "a red-hot mixture whose savage intensity is almost inconceivable to an American.… A child of six or seven years old will eat more of this at a meal than most adult Americans could in a week—eating it, too, without meat or grease of any kind; merely folding up the tortilla of wheat or corn-meal, dipping up a spoonful of the terrible compound with it, and hastily biting off the end, for fear some of the precious stuff should escape.