Regular readers may think I'm obsessed with food. Not really. It's just that what people eat tells me so much about how their cultures differ from mine.

Mexicans enjoy, if that is the right word, a GDP per head about one-tenth that of the U. S. Even so, there is a saying in Mexico, to the effect that no one ever goes hungry here. Something is always cooking somewhere: in street stalls, restaurants, homes, around campfires and in the mercados. People don't go hungry because they view a much wider range of meats and vegetables as good eating. If they can't buy or catch meat, they eat vegetables. If they can't afford corn and beans that day, they eat plants they find in nature such as huizontle or tunas.

In the meat department, we have chicharron—fried pig skin.

Chicharrones are rarely eaten out of hand like the cello-paks of pork rinds (what a euphemism) we used to buy in the States. Here, you buy walk-away servings with chopped vegetables and chili sauce dumped on top. Cooked in broth, chicharrones make good fillings for tacos. I've eaten them in stews and soups.

If chicharrones aren't exotic enough for you, there's chapulines—fried grasshoppers.

An Oaxacan staple eaten for thousands of years, chapulines are seasoned with garlic, chiles and lime, giving them a salty-sour flavor. I find them quite savory, either eaten out of hand, or as a filling for taquitos.

A long, roofed section of this mercado, festooned with papeles picados, houses carnicerias (butchers) along the sides, while asadores (grills) conveniently line the center. Pick out the meat you like and someone will cook it for you.

In the [hoto we see those wonderful fat little Oaxacan chorizos (sausages) on the grills, as well as carne asado (beef).

Pollo asado (grilled chicken) is one of my favorite Mexican foods, whether it's the succulent kind expertly prepared in a mercado stall, or the dry, chewy but flavorful meal you get at Pollo Felíz—Mexico's answer to McDonalds.

(I've mentioned before that Mexican people don't throw things out. They repair or recycle or make do. No product has so long a life cycle as one in Mexican hands. In the photo above, the cook's knife is stuck into the pile of chickens. It's been repaired with soft iron wire. Let that be a lesson to us all.)

Mexican meat is cut thin. Takes some getting used to. I was struck by the light shining through this carniceria's wares.

It isn't simply a matter of taste: there's a practical reason why Mexican meat is cut so thin. Mexican animals are not finished in feedlots. They come right off the range where they've been eating dried cornstalks if they're lucky and chaparral if they're not. These beasts are tough and stringy. A Mexican Rib-eye or New York steak is difficult to cut and chew, to say the least. Believe me, I've tried. Besides, from a Mexican standpoint, they're way too much meat for any one person.

Most chorizo and other mexican sausages are made by specialists using commercial casings and machines to form them. But in rural areas, you can still find ground meat and seasonings stuffed into intestines, the way God intended.

But they don't look as appealing, at least to my eyes, as the uniform, manufactured kind.

You can buy prepackeage unshelled peanuts at convenience stores for snacking whle driving down the carretera. More commonly, though, peanuts are boiled and served soft. In the southern U. S., we call them goobers.

Served this way, they're more of a staple than a snack. This somewhat distracted little girl is selling cacahuates (peanuts) intended for boiling.

Mexicans eat many other seeds These pods are called guaje.

They're pods of the mimosa tree (Leucaena leucocephala?). They're shelled, and the bland, high protein seeds cooked and eaten.

A reader commented that I had not been in a U. S. supermarket for awhile and wasn't familiar with today's prices. Guilty as charged. But even compared with Safeway's prices five years ago, the values in mercado stalls are astonishing.

At ten pesos to the dollar, the cantaloupes are priced five for $1.50-$2.00; the potatoes, $1 for 4½ pounds.

(The slogan at the top of the potato price sign says, "In war, everything is lost," a reference to the ongoing conflict in the City of Oaxaca.)

I find it interesting that cornmeal for making tortillas isn't sold much in the mercado, nor is unground corn. Apparently you grow your own or you buy it direct from a neighbor. In either case, you grind it yourself or you take it down to the molino (mill). My friend Berta relates how one of her chores as a little girl was to take a bucket of corn to the molino for grinding.

Dried beans are more in evidence, but there's still not a lot of them offered. Beans and corn, the foundations of life in Mexico, can be found in any restaurant or supermarket. But in the country, in the mountain villages, everyone produces their own. They have to, in an economy where cash is scarce, where much commerce is still done by barter.