While tortillas are the main staple in traditional Mixtec meals, other foods are equally important and less time consuming to prepare. These include other corn-based dishes such as a corn porridge (called ΓÇÿmasaΓÇÖ in Spanish) and cakes of corn dough wrapped in corn husks and steamed (called ΓÇÿtamalesΓÇÖ in Spanish and ticoo in Mixtec). Other traditional foods include squash and bean dishes, iguana and rabbit meat, and, in pre-Columbian times, turkey and deer for the elite. The cooking of these other foods was generally done in a circular cooking pot with a narrow neck and wide mouth (called an ΓÇÿollaΓÇÖ in Spanish and a quedze in sixteenth-century Mixtec.
