WARNING: GRAPHIC PHOTOS IN TODAY’S BLOG ENTRY

One of the joys of eating in Morocco, besides its melange of exotic spices, has to do with the fresh produce and other ingredients used by restaurants, street vendors, and regular households alike. You only have to walk through the souks to see people snatching up legumes, meat, eggs, dried fruits and a million types of olives for their daily needs. Restaurants will run out of dishes toward the end of the night, which is a good hint that they are not substituting with frozen or canned ingredients just to sell another meal.

Anyway, I thought it’d be fun to show you pictures of things I encounter in the souks that translate to actual dishes I find throughout my week in Morocco. About the warning at the beginning of this entry…let’s just say Morocco is a GREAT place to be vegetarian. Lentils, chickpeas, Fava beans, and a million other protein sources

are jazzed up with a touch of cumin or Ras El Hanout (a blend of many spices)

then cooked slowly with aubergines and other vegetables:

When they come served as a tagine

or falafel with tabouleh

I’m a happy camper. No need to ever go back to my carnivore ways again. Especially if it means thinking about the ingredients required for meat dishes…

FINAL WARNING: GRAPHIC PICS AHEAD

such as camel meat

for camel burgers:

Or chickens…

for the Moroccan pastilla, which is sweet and salty:

Or lamb…

for meat sandwiches sold at these stands:

All I can say about all of this is, thank goodness I’m a vegetarian. Remember when I said earlier that I can’t eat anything that used to make a sound? Well, no legumes had to suffer for my food. The only guilt I have is thinking about this poor man working in this hot oven…

so that I could enjoy this bread…

over and over, with every meal:

Yummy.