Breakfast in Mexico City is one of my favorite meals. Usually it’s a fruit plate or a glass of freshly squeezed juice, followed by a heavy, spicy, substantial dish that will keep you satiated until the 3 p.m. lunch hour. Pancakes in DF can be a dinnertime snack.
The most typical Mexican breakfasts offer [...]
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When I was a kid and my brother and I were really hungry, my mom used to whip up this quick tortilla-egg thing.
She’d tear tortillas into pieces and fry them in a little bit of oil, and then crack in some eggs. She somehow fried the tortillas exactly how I wanted — not too [...]
Continue Reading →“Pre-hispanic” is the term used to signify the period before the Spaniards arrived in Mexico. Even though that was around 500 years ago, several pre-hispanic foods (not to mention entire pre-hispanic dishes) are still readily available and widely eaten here.
Continue Reading →Last Friday morning, still snuggled in my bed, I suddenly had an intense desire for pancakes. But then I realized I had no flour. My rolling pantry (really a bunch of Elfa drawers from The Container Store) can only fit small packages of flour, and I’d used mine up to make these [...]
Continue Reading →The black sapote is a popular tropical fruit in Mexico, and it’s a funny-looking thing when it’s completely ripe. The hard green skin turns soft, dimply, and sunken-in in parts. It looks like a shrunken head, kind of.
After cutting it open, the flesh resembles dark-chocolate brownie batter. It’s glossy and [...]
Continue Reading →Even though Crayton doesn’t start work until 8 a.m., we rarely eat breakfast together. I’m usually still in bed, up late from watching iTunes episodes of Mad Men. And he gets free breakfast at work anyway. Most mornings I eat by myself.
It’s actually fine, because sitting alone at the kitchen table, [...]
Continue Reading →As you’ve probably already guessed, at any given moment of the day, I’m thinking about food in some form or another. I get obsessed with ingredients quickly — panela cheese! mangoes! mamey! — and then the obsession peters out, replaced by the next thing.
Lately, hovering about it all, is my obsession [...]
Continue Reading →In an unexpectedly Mexican turn of events, I’ve become addicted to having something sweet and bready with my coffee in the morning. Mamey muffins, which might be the world’s most perfect coffee food, pushed me over the edge. Since then I’ve dabbled in walnut-raisin bread, cornbread smeared with butter, unleavened cinnamon rolls [...]
Continue Reading →Sometimes I forget that Mexico City is an assault on the senses. Everything is loud — the cars honking, the parking attendants whistling, the branches of homemade brooms scraping the sidewalk, the peseros roaring down the street (they are the only thing that moves with urgency in this country), the vendors yelling about their [...]
Continue Reading → Who is Mija?
Mija is Lesley Téllez, a food writer and culinary guide in New York City. I spent four years in Mexico's Distrito Federal, which launched my deep love for Mexican food and culture. In 2010 I co-founded the tourism company Eat Mexico.
