Every neighborhood has one or more shops called "Abarrotes" or "Misceláneas." These carry canned and packaged foods, laundry detergent, cleaning products, toilet paper, bread, and snacks. Some also sell lunchmeat, cheese, milk, juice, and eggs.

For your fresh meat needs, you can visit your neighborhood butcher shop, "carnicería," or poultry shop, "pollería." The beef and pork are leaner and the chickens are plumper than in the States. We have found the meat and poultry here in Mexico are more flavorful than that in the USA.

I want to warn you about something you will see if you frequent your neighborhood butcher shop rather than the supermarket. It will shock you unless you were raised on a farm or ranch (unlike us wimpy city folk!).

The morning's deliveries don't arrive all neatly prepackaged on plastic-wrapped Styrofoam trays stacked in the back of a refrigerated truck. Oh, no! The rancher, driving the oldest, rustiest, most battered pickup truck you've ever seen, pulls up in front of the butcher shop with a pile of bloody body parts in the truck bed. Sometimes, the parts still have skin and hair attached. Usually, there are a couple of heads thrown into the mix…eyes, skin, hair, horns, teeth, and tongues intact. The rancher hoists the parts on his shoulder and hauls them into the shop, where the butcher converts them into various cuts.

Here's another warning just to prepare you. The butcher shops and poultry shops usually have large trays of nice, yellow chicken feet on the counter. Now, I can eat nearly anything, but I have to draw the line at chicken feet. Mexicans use the feet to flavor soup (and then eat them cooked) or they pickle the feet, cover them with salsa, and crunch them happily. If you buy a whole chicken, don't be surprised to find the feet (and sometimes the head!) tucked inside the body cavity with the heart, liver, and gizzard.

If you have decided to become a vegetarian because of my warnings, you can go to a greengrocery or "frutería" to buy fruits and vegetables. Some of these shops also carry a small selection of packaged foods and cleaning supplies.