After I tried the snails, I felt courageous because I was the only one to try it out of my group of friends. They were all creeped out by the fact that in the United States, we consider snails insects, but here in Morocco, they view them as a delicacy. I am not going to lie, the snails were slimy, but tasted really good.
The snails are prepared by the snail vendor. They generally boil the snails on a large pushcart and you can smell the distinct smell of the spices throughout the market. It smells a little like Mexican food because they cook them with a lot of cumin.
When you order them, the vendor places them in a small ceramic bowl with a toothpick. The toothpick is used to pry the snails out of the shell and you discard the shell on his cart. By the end of the day, the vendor has hundreds of discarded snail shells on his cart. Overall, I would definitely go back and eat more snails next time I'm at the local market!
You can tell about the environment that people grew up in from what they choose to eat. A long time ago in Morocco, people were not picky about what they chose to eat, and instead, they ate what was available to them. Here, they don't view snails as insects as we do. It is important not to judge what people eat because to them, it is completely normal. Let's consider this: maybe we are the weird ones who eat meat from cows or hot dogs?
