Archives for October 2009

Apple granola breakfast crisp, with yogurt

October 15, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

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, I have an excuse to pamper myself. Toasted pecans on my cereal, maybe. Or oatmeal with agave nectar and diced acitrón. (As I think I’ve mentioned before, Crayton likes things plain and simple. Raisins in his cereal is as far as he’ll go.)

Lately, I’ve been on a cereal-fruit-raisin kick, and feeling kind of blah about it. Then I saw this recipe on Smitten Kitchen a few days ago: warm cinnamon apples, baked in the oven, covered with a crunchy granola topping. You top the whole thing with yogurt for a luxurious breakfast treat. (Sounds like a commercial, doesn’t it?)

Luckily, I had all the ingredients in my pantry — I like to be prepared to make granola, even if I never do — and exactly two apples in my crisper. I bought organic, unsweetened yogurt at Orígenes Orgánicos, a natural foods store and restaurant in Condesa. And I had three teeny gratin dishes I got on sale in Atlanta last month. Aren’t they adorable?

The result — warm apples in a seriously cute dish — was pretty much all the pampering I needed to take me through the rest of the afternoon. (Which ended up being fraught with Wi-Fi and printer problems.) To end the day on an even better note, I went to the bakery and bought a crusty loaf of country bread. Grilled cheeses for dinner.

My scaled-down recipe below.
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We still have electricity — for now

October 14, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Not sure if you heard, but last weekend the Mexican government seized Luz y Fuerza del Centro, Mexico City’s power utility. The government’s reasoning: The company was inefficient and corrupt. (To quote Joan Cusack in High Fidelity: “That is shocking.”)

I’m all for Mexico ramping up its efficiency. And Luz y Fuerza workers were notoriously bad — they’d siphoned so many dollars off the public that they built themselves a $10 million basketball gym. Meanwhile, customers in their offices often had to wait hours, just to speak to a human.

Good on Calderón, for taking a stand. I just wish we knew more about what’s supposed to happen next. According to El Universal, the government has mentioned hiring some of the workers back. But what is the public supposed to do in the meantime? We no longer have an electricity company. (Does anyone else think that’s weird?) It’s gone. Dissolved.

People can still pay their light bills at the bank, but no one has explained where that money is going, or whether we’ll all be in arrears once the new agency opens. And what if you have a power outage? To whom do you complain?

Sporadic outages have popped up around the city, although no one has come out and said, “It’s because they closed Luz y Fuerza!” Yesterday, Alice’s power was shut off, and she came over to store some things in our refrigerator. She mentioned that Contramar had no power, and neither did several comida corrida places in her neighborhood. People were eating in the dark.

“The issue is that no one knows who’s turning the lights on, and who’s turning them off,” she said.

Later, I asked our neighbor Carlos: What happens if we lose power? Whom do we call? I thought that he, being Mexican, would know how to handle all this.

He smiled at me and said, “Don’t suffer if you are not suffering.”

Huh.

Never thought of it that way.

But he’s pretty much right. It seems like in Mexico, all you can do is educate yourself about what’s going on, and then hope and pray that the worst stuff doesn’t happen to you. We have no control over any of it. I have candles, windows, a man I love, friends, a gym to take showers at. I made a particularly awesome apple-granola crisp this morning. I guess those are the things that matter, and not the possibility that we could lose power.

Going to go eat my apple crisp now. And by the way, props to Gancho Blog for helping me understand this whole Luz y Fuerza mess.

Garbanzo bean soup with celery greens and mushrooms

October 13, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Yesterday, feeling crappy and not fit for mingling among the living, I decided to raid my fridge and make soup. I was picturing Caldo A La Lesley: a rich stock of onions and carrots and chicken, dotted with garbanzo beans instead of noodles.

Opening the fridge brought me back to reality. Missy — (sometimes I call myself missy in my head, because it reminds me of my mom, who used to call me that when she was annoyed) — Missy, you have just returned from a week-long trip. You don’t have an onion. Or carrots. Or — even though the freezer does have egg whites, hamburger patties and ice cream — chicken.

I couldn’t go grocery shopping, because that required leaving the house. My head and stuffy nose couldn’t handle that.

So I thought about what I did have: garbanzo beans. And, surprisingly, celery greens. I’d frozen them a few months ago, when I bought a particularly leafy stalk and couldn’t bear to throw the tops away. I’d washed and dried them, wrapped them in plastic wrap and tin foil, and forgotten about them. But their day had finally come. And I could use the dried shitake mushrooms I bought at the Korean market months ago.

Now I had a plan.

So I put my garbanzo beans on the stove, which I’d helpfully soaked overnight, assuming I’d use them for some type of soup. Added my frozen block of celery greens and let the whole thing simmer for about 45 minutes. Then I added my mushrooms, a hefty dose of salt, and let the whole thing simmer for an hour more.

I was surprised how good it turned out. Simple, and light, and kind of sweet from the celery. Not only that, but the greens were actually the star of the dish. (I assumed they’d be overly bitter for some reason.) They were mild, with a soft celery flavor. And they were hearty enough to bite into. They weren’t as toothsome as spinach or kale — two hearty, dark greens I adore — but perhaps only one or two notches below.

And the best part is, I used my entire celery stalk! And made a soup without having any fresh produce.

The recipe’s below. Now that I’ve whet your appetite for celery greens, here are a few other ways to use them:

From Saveur: Crisp Celery Green Fritters
From Serious Eats: Braise them with garlic
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Honey, are those dark circles under your eyes?

October 12, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Our flight from New York was delayed last night, so we finally walked in the door at about midnight. We set down our bags and collapsed on the couch.

I stared off into space for awhile. Then I happened to glance over at hubby.

A black, purplish looking bruise had formed underneath his eye, starting from the corner of his eye and tracing underneath his eyelid.

I frowned.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him.

“Huh?”

“What’s wrong with your eye?”

He shrugged.

“You have something on your eye!” I said, a little panicked now. “It looks like a bruise. But it wasn’t there before. And — ” I peered at his other eye, where a faint smudge of black had bloomed, and now appeared to be spreading. “You have it on your other eye too!”

He leaned back on the couch and closed his eyes. “It’s probably nothing. I’m tired.”

“No, it’s not nothing! This has never happened to you before. Those look… really bad.”

Suddenly it hit me that maybe Crayton’s blood had gone sour. Maybe he’d stretched himself to the point of exhaustion, and these two bruises were signs that he cannot live this crazy, work- and travel-all-the-time lifestyle anymore. Maybe he was about to have internal bleeding from the exhaustion, and what was I supposed to do?

Then he spoke.

“You know what?” he said. “I was reading the newspaper. It’s probably just newsprint.”

He raised his harm and rubbed his bruised eye. I winced. But sure enough, the black smudges disappeared.

“You know how I rub my eyes all the time.”

I frowned again. Really? That was it?

“I don’t know…” I said.

“I’m fine.”

Newsprint. Of course. He’d been reading The New York Times on the entire plane ride home. We sat there in silence, and the flutters disappeared from my stomach. My blood-gone-sour theory dissolved, dusted onto the imaginary newspaper pages that now filled my head.

I gave him a tiny smile. He smiled, too.

“Sorry,” I said, feeling absolutely lame. “But really, you never know….”

Día de los Muertos in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán

October 12, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Remember my trip to Patzcuaro? It was a research for an article on Día de Los Muertos there. The article was just published American Way magazine, American Airlines’ in-flight publication.

Check it out here.

And now, since I’m currently sick, I’m going to go back to sipping manzanilla and ordering groceries online from Superama. But I can’t pick anything too crazy, because then they might not have it, even though it appears right there on the screen. (They let you order it, and then they call and say, “Señora Lesley? No tenemos espinacas. Lechuga romana está bien?”)

If you know of any homeopathic ways to relieve sinus pressure, I’m all ears.

Korean food in Mexico City

October 8, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

As I’ve mentioned before, Mexico City’s Korean neighborhood sits just a few blocks from my house. A few weeks ago, we finally made it out to a restaurant there, courtesy of my friend Hugh.

He’d raved about this certain Korean restaurant in an email, saying he didn’t know the name, but it was at Oxford and Hamburgo in the Zona Rosa, “the spot next to the strip club, with the suits of armor out front.”

A big group of us agreed to meet there on a Saturday night at 7:30 p.m. We walked up and sure enough, there were two suits of armor. (Great landmark, Hugh!) The restaurant ended up being a narrow, two-story building next door, with a terrace overflowing with balloons. A back room on the first floor held one table just big enough for the 11 of us.

While we waited for the staff to clean it, a group of Korean kids, maybe nine or 10 years old, stared in awe at our friend John, who happens to be really tall. One kid walked up to John and jumped up and down, eager to see what life might look like in John’s orbit. It was adorable.

The Mexican waiter brought us thick menus, and I felt a little panicked. I’ve eaten Korean food a few times before, and loved it, but it’s kind of overwhelming to stare at five pages items, and you’re not entirely sure what they are. We all agreed to share everything family style, so I ordered soup with merluza (hake), egg and vegetables, and we got several orders of grill-and-your-table ribs and skirt steak, and bibimbap, more soups, and dumplings.

Just a few minutes after we ordered, the waiter brought out dozens of small dishes: kimchi, plates of what looked like glass noodles, a type of mayonnaise salad with apples, tempura shrimp….

We nibbled. And then the meat came out. We turned on tabletop grill, and designated Joy’s friend H. as grillmaster.

When the meat was done, H. showed us how to make these lettuce-wrap packets, by grabbing a lettuce leaf, slathering it with spicy red sauce, adding garlic, a piece of meat, and then a jalapeño. Of course I had to add two jalapeños, because I’m hard like that. Then my eyes started watering and I had to take a break.

The food was great, though. I loved the communal aspect of the meal — passing the small dishes, the lettuce leaves, holding up our plates to the grillmaster, and waiting for our little gift. And it was amazing how many flavors and textures were represented — anything from the mild mayonnaise salad with apples, to the starchy, eyewateringly-hot bibimbap, to the garlicky kimchi.

After we’d paid the bill — and by the way, Korean food is expensive for Mexico City — the owner came out and introduced himself, and shook all of our hands.

I think we rolled ourselves out the door, but it was worth it. I’d go back again in a second. (As long as I haven’t eaten much that day. This is a huge meal, people.)

GO THERE
The Unnamed Korean Restaurant*
(*unnamed to us; it does have a Korean sign, if you speak the language)
Located on Oxford Street, just north of Hamburgo, next to the black building with the suits of armor out front
Avg cost per person, including drinks: $30-$40 USD
Note: To drink, they offered Mexican beers and Korean soju, a distilled beverage typically made from rice. I haven’t seen soju yet here, so this was an interesting find.

A peek at Colonia Cuauhtemoc, my Mexico City neighborhood

October 7, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Back when we started our apartment hunt, I had my mind set on living in trendy Roma or Condesa. They’re pretty much where all the American expats live. (Unless they’re trailblazers living in the Centro.)

After looking at a few Condesa apartments, we realized what our budget would buy there — a bathroom with mold splotches, or a spotless, but small, one-bedroom. In Roma, which I adored for its colonial buildings and leafy plazas, we didn’t see anything we liked in the short time frame we had.

And so we moved to Cuauhtemoc, because it was the closest to Crayton’s job. It’s a quiet, middle-class colonia bordering the Zona Rosa. Most of the cafes and restaurants cater to the business crowd, and comida corrida is abundant. After 9 p.m., the streets are pretty empty.

For the first month we lived here, I felt a pang whenever my Condesa and Roma friends talked about the cool cantinas they went to, or the cool salad spot they visited for lunch. We lived in residential, middle-classville. We did not live in the hottest neighborhood. Basically I needed to get over it.

Now, seven months after moving in, I actually really like it here. I love living a half-block from Reforma, and being able to walk to the Zona Rosa. (Which is gritty, and loud, and has cheapity-cheap beer.) We can walk to Roma Norte if we want a glass of wine. And we have a tianguis a 10-minute walk away, in Parque James Sullivan. I love my cheese dude there. We bought a jalapeño asadero from him a few weeks ago.

Last week, after walking to San Rafael to see a free concert, we wandered by a neighborhood jazz joint I’d been wanting to check out, Papa Beto’s. We peeked in the windows and the place was packed — maybe here was where all the Cuauhtemoqueños were secretly hanging out.

The doors were locked, so we ended up at Las Máximas, a beer joint about a stone’s throw from the Telmex building on Parque Via. We played some futbolito and Crayton won. (By pure luck.) Then we walked home.

Have I mentioned how much I love not driving?

Here are a few more places I like visiting in my neighborhood, in case you ever find yourself passing through. (Or in case a friend of yours ever raves about Condesa, and you can say, “Umm… I heard Cuauhtemoc was kind of cool too.”)

Tacos El Caminero. Seriously, best salsas EVER. It’s at Rio Lerma 138, a block from the American Embassy.

Berretín. This is an Argentinean restaurant with great pizza and a good wine list. It’s at the corner of Rio Lerma and Rio Guadalquivir, just a few doors down from Papa Bill’s.

Comida Libenesa. Great falafel, but unfortch the guy takes foreeeever to make one sandwich. Worth it if you’re not in a hurry. At the corner of Rio Nazas and Rio Tigris.

Mezzo Mezzo. A warm little pizza joint with hip clientele, a vegetarian-skewed menu and thin-crust pizza, baked in a brick oven. Try the poblano and corn pie. Downside: They don’t serve alcohol. (Sometimes a girl wants a glass of wine with her pizza!) Rio Neva 30A, between Rio Lerma and Reforma.

Bar Gold. A cantina at the corner of Antonio Caso and Serapio Rendon in San Rafael. Great place to grab a beer, eat free popcorn, and listen to a salsa band churn out the hits.

Tandem. Sometimes open and sometimes not, but great for a pint and ambient house music. Rio Nazas 73, at the corner of Rio Tiber.

Juega el Gallo. Attentive staff, great salads and tacos, and loud and crazy on fútbol nights. My only gripe is that they close around 8 or 9 during the week. How can a place call itself a cantina, and close at 8 p.m.? Rio Rhin 75, at the corner of Rio Papaloápan.

Mexican plastic wrap hell

October 6, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

About a month ago, while paying the visit to the chicken lady at Mercado Cuauhtemoc, I spotted a guy selling paper goods and remembered that we needed plastic wrap. Without thinking much about it, I picked out one for 20 pesos (less than two bucks) and took it home.

I have since cursed every day of this plastic wrap’s existence. This is it below.

(Yeah, Wezer Shine! I’ll “Wezer Shine” you, in the eye!)

It’s not that it’s not sticky. It’s too sticky. It clings to everything. It clings to its own cardboard tube, causing holes when I try to peel off a piece. It clings to my fingers. It clings nicely to a bowl, but that result is not worth the horror it takes to get there.

This box has no metal teeth. Did you know they even make plastic wrap boxes without metal teeth? I didn’t. This means I have to dig out a pair of scissors every time I want a piece of plastic wrap. And of course the wrap clings to the scissors, too.

When I do manage to cut off a piece — it took me awhile, but I learned the secret’s in the angle of the scissors, juxtaposed with the angle of the wrap — the plastic immediately shrinks back onto its tube. (Like a snake scurrying back into its hovel!) So if I want to cut another piece, I can’t tell where I started. There are no seams, people. NO SEAMS.

After two months of this crizzap, I decided to say basta. Last time I was in the States, I bought a tube of plastic wrap from Target. It looked really pretty. Especially when placed daintily on a table runner.

I cannot wait to use it.

How to watch the NFL in Mexico — Crayton finally speaks!

October 5, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Editor’s note: Today we have a guest post from Crayton. While he usually prefers to remain the “silent partner” on The Mija Chronicles, he has come across some information that he thinks you may enjoy. Here it is.

Watching the NFL in Mexico is a lot like watching it in the States. The broadcast networks, plus a couple of cable channels, air the games, so if you’re a general-interest fan you can get your fill.

The problem arises for a person like me who is a devoted fan of a particular team, in this case the mighty Chicago Bears. In the U.S., it’s impossible to see every game each week without the Sunday Ticket package, available on DirecTV. Mexico carries Sunday Ticket as well, through Sky, the country’s biggest satellite provider.

We aren’t in a position to get a satellite at the moment, so no Sky for us. (A note from Lesley: Whaaa? You mean we aren’t getting Sky?) That led me, on our first NFL Sunday in Mexico, on a desperate search for a place to watch the majestic Bears demolish the Seahawks.

A side note: If I were in most other countries besides Mexico and the U.S., I could stream the NFL games through the NFL’s own website, which offers that service in most parts of the world. Mexico is blocked since Sky offers Sunday Ticket here.

A few weekends ago, riding around town in the GPS-equipped SUV of my friend Dr. Lic. Carlitos, who likes to put Darude’s techno anthem “Sandstorm” on blast, I popped into several establishments to inquire about the availability of the Sunday Ticket.

Let’s just say it’s not a household name here. Several waiters and bartenders at cantinas and Irish pubs said they did have NFL games, but when I asked them to grab a remote control to pull up the menu for their Sky set-top box, it was apparent they didn’t have ALL the games. (Lesley: Yeeeah, cantina dude! Top that!)

A gentleman at the host’s stand at an Irish pub in the ritzy Polanco neighborhood suggested we go to Caliente, a gambling establishment about 10 minutes away, which has a sports book. Unfortunately, Caliente was not a Caesar’s-Palace-style sports book.

The Polanco location featured a quiet, well-lit room with gamblers seated at cafeteria-style tables. There was little running commentary, only the occasional cheer when someone’s team scored. A waiter brought drinks from a restaurant downstairs, but the service was spotty and unpredictable. Meh. I don’t know about you, but when I’m watching some football, I need the beers to keep on coming. (Lesley: This is true.)

For this past weekend’s game against the pitiful Lions, I wanted something better. So I did some Internet searches. A series of sort-of-handy Yahoo Answers led me to a bar you might be familiar with if you’re from the U.S.: Hooters.

Hooters has one location on the route of Mexico’s Metrobus route on Insurgentes Sur, in the Colonia San Angel.

I placed a call.

“Hi, I’m looking for a place that has all the NFL games, even those that aren’t available on cable TV. Do you have those?”

“Yes, we have NFL games.”

“But do you have ALL of them? Because some aren’t available on cable.”

“Yes, we have all of them. We even open early, at noon, so people can watch the games.”

“OK. So you have ALL of them.”

“That’s the case.”

I was suspicious. I’d been burned a few times. But we stopped by yesterday around 12:30, and true to the Hooters dude’s words, the place was blanketed with LCD screens showing every single NFL game in progress. I made my way to a barstool, suffered through the first half and then enjoyed the more lopsided Bears victory in the second period.

“But Crayton,” you may be asking, “what was it like to watch the game at Hooters in Mexico?” (Sorry, that was me, Lesley, again.)

I’ve never been to a Hooters in the U.S., so I can’t really provide a comparison. The servers wear orange shorts and pantyhose, and some glide around on roller skates. I assume this is common. All I know is that the beer was cold (if not cheap by Mexico standards) and the game was on. That makes me a loyal Hooters customer, at least here in Mexico City.

GO BEARS!

Acitrón, the crystallized cactus

October 2, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

While at Central de Abastos last week, I spied squares of this jellied, lemon-yellow substance. “Acitrón,” a hand-painted sign read. They were 15 pesos each. (That’s little over $1.)

I remembered reading something about acitrón in the newspaper awhile back, but I couldn’t remember exactly what. So I bought some. Took it home, did a little googling, and found out that it’s crystallized biznaga cactus.

Not only that, but it’s semi-hard to find — the Mexican government declared the biznaga cactus in danger of extinction in 2003. Since then, according to El Universal, breadmakers all over Mexico have scrambled to find a substitute for acitrón in their Rosca de Reyes recipes, a traditional bread eaten during Three Kings Day. Most now use ate (pronounced AH-tay), another traditional type of jellied fruit.

I wasn’t up for making bread, or chiles en nogada, which is the other popular way to use acitrón. So a few days ago, I diced it and tossed it in a salad with toasted pecans. It had a mild, vegetal flavor I liked, despite being doused in sugar.

Apparently you can also eat it plain, as a dessert with your digestif. This woman chopped it up and stirred it into muffins, with figs and dried cranberries.

If you have any other acitrón suggestions, let me know. I’d love to hear them!

UPDATE: Check out the comments section for LaZorra’s very cool link to a photo of the weird-looking, roly-poly biznaga cactus.

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