Miinu Food and Cuisine

Most Miinu are omnivorous have a diverse diet much like humans do, and their digestive system can even process more complex foods like leaves, grasses, wood fibers, raw meat, and in some cases, blood.
However, they are also limited by what foods they have access to.

Gathering and Hunting

"It's important when preparing your meat to remove the head, as no one wants to see their food stare back at them. However you don't mind, feel free to eat the head raw yourself, it's very juicy.

— A common Miinu recipe.

One common way Miinu get food is through the classic hunter gatherer method. Miinu will seek out wild plants pick them before carrying them back to the settlement. Usually this is food small enough to carry, such as seeds, grains, small pieces of produce, mushrooms, small berries, sap and nectar. Miinu have an advantage as well, being able to eat things such as leaves, grass or pollen. Larger fruits and vegetables that are impractical to carry will usually be sliced up into smaller, more manageable pieces, which reduces their shelf life and makes them a rarer delicacy.
Herbs and spices, are also collected in the wild, and minerals like salt can be found in the mines of ants.
Many miinu are carnivorous and need a diet of meat as well. This can be achieved easily by hunting natural bugs. Many Miinu are natural born hunters and have physical adaptations to aid them in finding and killing prey. Popular insects to hunt are grasshoppers, flies, ants, moths, and grubs, due to their abundance and limited risk with hunting. Beetle meat is also popular, but their hard shells make hunting difficult. The meat of carnivorous insects is often less desirable due to the large risk for little reward in most cases. Harvesting the eggs of insects is also a good source of protein. Miinu will even eat their own unfertalized eggs.
In most communities, you only eat the meat of natural bugs and hunting other Miinu is considered cannibalism, thus pretty taboo. The doesn't stop some miinu who regularly practice cannibalism such as The Spider Witch, or some villages will practice it as a burial ritual.
Miinu will often form hunting groups to go after larger prey, such as birds, lizards, frogs, large fish, and rodents. These large animals are big and often dangerous, and the hunt of just one is a big enough event to warrant massive hunting groups, and usually a celebration of some sort afterwards as they cut up the meat. These are also some of the few opportunities they have access to bones, which can be used as a useful resource.
Fishing is another common way of gathering food. They will go after small fish, frog tadpoles, and small coruscations like shrimp, krill, and small crabs. Things that are also commonly harvested from the water are kelp, algae, sea grapes, oysters, fish eggs, and frog spawn.

Farming and Food Production

As the miinu are a advanced civilization, they have figured out techniques for producing their own food. There are obvious examples, like how Bee Miinu produce honey, but also there's the case of ant miinu who farm aphids like cattle and collect the honeydew they secrete, of leaf cutters who can farm an edible moss and mushrooms.
Farming larger foods it not impossible but it is difficult. Typically, Miinu stick to farming smaller plants that are easy to maintain and easy to harvest at their size. With flying Miinu, their height is less of a deterrent than their physical strength. As well, plants that need a lot of water are harder to grow if they don't respond well with aqueducts and such. A lot of the grain, spices and herbs they can harvest in the wild can be farmed. They can grow nuts, beans, corn, and peas pretty easily. Wheat can also be grown, though pollen is often used as a substitute for flour due to being easier to collect. They also prefer growing the smaller breeds of vegetables, like cherry tomatoes, pearl onions, miniature cucumbers, peppers, brussel sprouts, and baby parsnips/potatos/carrots. They also will grow small fruit like grapes, blueberries, strawberries, cranberries, raspberries, acai, gooseberries and blackberries. They also harvest the seeds from pomegranates.
Another aspect of farming is raising livestock. Most of the time the 'livestock' in question will be small animals like snails and large beetles, which not only are used for meat and byproduct, but are useful for being used as work animals. One of the few mammals that Miinu can safely raise are guinea pigs, due to their docile, herbivorous nature and their herding habits. The rodents not only make a good source for milk, but their meat, bones, and fur are also harvested as resources. Many treat their animals not just as food, but pets, and it's encouraged to show them respect, even when killing them for food.

Human Food

Some populations of miinu who live close to human settlements, such as nomads, or Treasure City, will often steal human food from the trash or directly out of homes. This is one of the few rare times that Miinu have access to foods that are impossible for them to acquire, like red meat (beef, pork, venison) or poultry (chicken, turkey). It's also the only times they have access to dairy products like cows milk, yogert, or cheese, though many miinu have notably experienced stomach problems due to being lactose intolerant.

Cooking and Food Prep

Miinu are usually able to eat food without cooking. Their stomachs are highly acidic and they have a longer (to scale) digestive tract than humans. They are often able to eat raw meat and fibrous food without issue, but that doesn't mean it's the only way they eat. Miinu are capable of cooking and preparing food. Cooking not only eliminates all chance bacterial infection, but enhances the flavor and nutritional value of their food.
Miinu have developed techniques in preparing different types of food, such as extracting oil from seeds and nuts for frying, vinegar can be extracted from starches and used for pickling vegetables. Miinu have also discovered fermentation that allows them to make alchohol, but also oddly enough, cockroach milk is often an alternative to to mammalian milk, which is capable of being fermented into cheeses and yogurts. Cockroach cheese,
Bee bread, named after the mixture created by natural bees, is a popular sweet bread that can be baked using pollen instead of wheat and insect eggs instead of chicken eggs, and using honey as a sweetener.
Beetle Stew is a popular beginners dish using beetle meat, honey dew broth and various spices for flavor.