The food we grow up eating makes us who we are, it’s part of our heritage. The day will inevitably arrive for you as a longer-term visitor or expat to Mexico when you want your food, cuisine that’s quite different from standard Mexican fare.
If you are on a budget, dining out in Mexico in 2025 also isn’t nearly as economical as it was when I arrived in 2014. Dining out from a health perspective is fraught with mishaps of chopped hotdogs billed as turkey sausage or wonderful dish you tried last week having absolutely nothing in common with said dish you ordered yesterday somewhere else. Or as my Mexican friend puts the experience of restauarant dining in her home country, “You have no idea what you’re eating.” For a few meals, maybe that doesn’t matter, but long-term, it does.
Whereas in the US healthy prepared meals are widely available in grocery stores, in Mexico they are not. Food services are focused on providing a meal for at the lowest cost, not your health. You absolutely cannot control your diet without cooking.
Once in the kitchen, you have to accept that product availability in Mexican grocery stores is vastly different from the US, and more limited. (Not the produce itself, but rather the accompanying ingredients you’re familiar with). Some staples don’t cook up the same. Some look the same and taste different (thanks to agricultural or processing differences).
Local recipes can be delicious, but are created for a different palate. Language barriers in grocery stores and the metric system used in native recipes can discourage preparing your own healthy food, resulting in unhealthy choices. (Tacos, enchiladas and a host of comidas rapidas (fast foods) are just meat in a tortilla or bread. Not a vegetable in the vicinity.)
The Lazy Expat: Healthy Recipes that Translate in Mexico takes you past all those challenges. It’s an innovative cookbook with 150 easy, healthy recipes created especially for frustrated, underfed travelers and expats, all extensively tested to taste great in both Mexico and at home. Recipes run the gamut between simplified and healthy Mexican pozole to very-American Healthy Chicken Fried Steak.
The recipes require few utensils and no fancy gadgets. A number of recipes are presented as templates that can be modified in endless ways to compensate for the more limited ingredient selection in Mexican chain grocery stores and limited cookware in rental kitchens.
Recipes serve 2-4 people and focus on “Superfoods” available in both countries along with other standard healthy ingredients. You will learn what is easily available and what’s not, saving you a phenomenal amount of time and frustration when shopping in a foreign culture that views merchandising (and inventory) quite differently. The Lazy Expat provides meal planning tips, Spanish phrases for shopping and much more.
Don’t worry, we’ll introduce you to some traditional Mexican dishes too, modified for American tastes and made simple and healthier. Most dishes keep well, a bonus for those who don’t want to cook every day.
Ingredients in every single recipe are available in any larger Mexican chain grocery store and translated to Spanish, making grocery lists much easier to compile, without all the back and forth translation of working from vocabulary lists.
With more than seven years of research, development and testing behind it, The Lazy Expat: Healthy Recipes That Translate in Mexico is all you need to eat inexpensively, simply and well in Mexico. It’s a book you can use every day, no matter what side of the border you’re on.
Available on amazon.com and amazon.com.mx