More on Kaqchikel kitchen culture and food
(based on fieldnotes by Mareike Sattler)

There are a variety of ways to prepare maize: it is eaten on the cob (elote), in tamales, as homily, in drinks, but tortillas remain the single most important source of nutrition in most of Tecpán's household, Maya and ladino alike.

Tortillas are the heart of a meal, and it is not uncommon for one to eat ten to twenty of them with at a sitting.  The tortillas fill one up; the beans, meat, and salsas are for flavor.
wäy: a normal tortilla
pixtun: small and thick tortilla that men take for lunch when they have to eat in the field
wotz'otz': a toasted tortilla, often topped with black bean puree and a tomato sauce (chirmol); sometimes crumbled into coffee

Tamales are made of maiz dough (masa) that is wrapped in corn leaves and sometimes filled with meat or salsa.
sub'an: plain tamalitos, wrapped in corn leves, roughly oval shapped
q'anaq': little tamales (tamalitos) wrapped in leaves from the q'anaq' tree, a dark brown slightly felty leaf in the shape of a hand that gives a nice flavor to the tamalito
jok': tamal de elote, made from fresh corn
nima takamäl, chucho: tamale wrapped and tied on one end, like you would wrap and tie a bottle, and then steamed, whereas the masa for tamalitos is placed on the corn leaf, then covered with the leaf from the sides, while the ends are just folded over. The masa is generally salted and enriched with some lard. The filling consists of a small piece of mainly chicken or pork, in a spicy (not necessarily hot) red sauce.
b'oq': made with dough from soaked rice and nixtamal ground up, cooked with lard and salt and spices until thickened; very labor intensive. Filled with a piece of meat, a tomato based sauce (which can become very expensive in the winter time for Christmas), a piece of chile verde. Wrapped in fresh big green leaves, banana leaves, and steamed.
to'on: tamalito with black beans inside

Maiz is also drunk in a variety of drinks know as atoles.
ruyu'al ki'en, fresco de masa: masa diluted with water, sugar and powdered cinnamon added.
uk'uya': atol from toasted tortilla. The toasted tortilla is diluted in water, salt (occasionally sugar) added
puruj, atol quebrantado: The nixtamal is crudely ground, the stuff that comes up while heating it up discarded, add salt, and drink.
q'or pa chäj, atol de ceniza: ashes instead of the customary lime has been added to the nixtamal to soften the skin of the corn kernels. Part of the nixtamal is cooked with some black beans, and are ground up together, and later swirled into the atol drink, made from the remaining nixtamal.