red simply the foods and beverages
of the people. No attempt will be made to treat of consumption in
its breadth as it appears to the economist.

Foods

There are few forms of animal life about the Igorot that he will not
and does not eat. The exceptions are mainly insectivora, and such
larger animals as the mythology of the Igorot says were once men --
as the monkey, serpent-eagle, crow, snake, etc. However, he is not
wholly lacking in taste and preference in his foods. Of his common
vegetable foods he frequently said he prefers, first, beans; second,
rice; third, maize; fourth, camotes; fifth, millet.

Rice is the staple food, and most families have sufficient for
subsistence during the year. When rice is needed for food bunches
of the palay, as tied up at the harvest, are brought and laid in the
small pocket of the wooden mortar where they are threshed out of the
fruit head. One or two mortarsful is thus threshed and put aside on
a winnowing tray. When sufficient has been obtained the grain is put
again in the mortar and pounded to remove the pellicle. Usually only
sufficient rice is threshed and cleaned for the consumption of one
or two days. When the pellicle has been pounded loose the grain is
winnowed on a large round tray by a series of dexterous movements,
removing all chaff and dirt with scarcely the loss of a kernel of
good rice.

The work of threshing, hulling, and winnowing usually falls to the
women and girls, but is sometimes performed by the men when their
women are preoccupied. At one time when an American wished two or
three bushels of palay threshed, as horse food for the trail, three
Bontoc men performed the work in the classic treadmill manner. They
spread a mat on the earth, covered it with palay, and then tread,
or rather "rubbed," out the kernels with their bare feet. They often
scraped up the mass with their feet, bunching it and rubbing it in
a way that strongly suggested hands.

Rice is cooked in water without salt. An earthern pot is half filled
with the grain and is then filled to the brim with cold water. In
about twenty minutes the rice is cooked, filling the vessel, and
the water is all absorbed or evaporated. If there is no great haste,
the rice sets ten or fifteen minutes longer while the kernels dry out
somewhat. As the Igorot cooks rice, or, for that matter, as the native
anywhere in the Islands cooks it, the grains are not mashed and mussed
together, but each kernel remains