Oaxacan on Sunshine
You probably need a Mexican vacation right about now
Hello!
I apologize for the silence — it turns out promoting a cookbook while shooting a TV show and making a weekly podcast is a LOT & while I thought about writing a newsletter (many, many times), my sleepy, overstimulated little brain honestly couldn’t think of anything interesting to say. So I let it watch White Lotus and go on after-work neighborhood bike rides and drink beers with friends and eat pasta alla vodka and, you know, REST. I appreciate your support and I hope you understand!
But my brain and I just got back from a 10 day vacation, so we’re feeling fresh and ready to newsletter again!
I traveled to sunny Oaxaca City, Puerto Escondido and Mexico City with one of my best friends. We are both curly-haired, Type-A planners, but because she makes Excel spreadsheets & I still consult Lonely Planet guidebooks & makes lists with paper and pen, she has labeled us Digital Curls™ and Analog Curls™, respectively.
How do you plan a trip?? I share one of my favorite (digital!) tips below!
If you love art, bright colors, delicious food, friendly people & a walkable city - go to Oaxaca!
We did a guided bike ride to the world’s W I D E S T tree (she’s 2,000 years old!) & stopped at a local market to have lunch.
We took a cooking class at an urban farm, and I finally got to see corn go through the nixtamalization process — which is what transforms it into masa. I’ve been curious about this for so long!
The technique has been done for at least 3,000 years in Mesoamerica — dried corn kernels are boiled in an alkaline lime solution, then soaked for hours until soft. The process helps us digest the corn and absorb its nutrients, and renders the kernels squishy enough to grind into masa for tortillas, tetelas and molotes. Every corn tortilla you buy starts with this nixtamalization process!
We pressed squash blossoms into our tortillas, something I can’t wait to try at home when my summer garden is in full swing!
We stuffed our tetelas (masa folded into triangle pockets) & molotes (like an empanada) with chopped squash blossoms (flor de calabaza), espazote (a delicious herb), Oaxacan cheese & homemade mole sauces & threw them on the comal to cook.
I gotta have my nature time, so we did a morning trip to Hierve el Agua, about an hour and a half east of Oaxaca City, and did a short hike to these otherworldly calcified mineral pools.
All three of these activities were booked through AirBnB Experiences, which has become my go-to trip-planning resource. This is not an ad! But I wanted to share this little travel hack, since most people I’ve mentioned it to have never heard of, or used, the feature.
I’ve used it to book hiking, biking and cooking experiences in Morocco, Guatemala and Oaxaca. It connects you with local guides who offer everything from sailing trips, walking tours, crafting classes — you can even hire a local photographer to follow you around and take professional photos.
You don’t have to be staying in an AirBnB to use the feature — Experiences has its own tab on the website.
I like giving my money directly to locals, rather than big tour companies!
Cooking classes are usually in someone’s home, so you get an intimate look at how locals live. The food is home-style, not restaurant food, so it often ends up being the best meal of the trip! In Guatemala, we cooked in a rural backyard kitchen with the wife of a local coffee farmer, and were able to pay him directly for bags of his roasted coffee beans!
Experiences are usually very reasonably priced!
My two favorite tastes of the trip were surprisingly simple.
A perfect tomato salad from Levadura de Olla, a Michelin starred restaurant in Oaxaca, where several varieties of ripe tomatoes and tomatillos were dressed in a fruity vinaigrette and shingled over a beet puree.
We were OBSESSED with Oaxacan cheese! Salty and ropey, with the texture of string cheese, we bought ball after ball of freshly made cheese at the markets and repeatedly ruined our appetites snacking on it before dinner, often with pickled carrots, sometimes eating it in bed! Our favorite variety was marinated in salsa macha.
Other Oaxaca highlights:
Releasing one-hour-old baby turtles on the beach in Puerto Escondido with the non-profit Vive M.A.R.
Spending hours exploring the ancient archaeological site Monte Albán, one of Mesoamericas oldest cities, built in the 500s BC.
Shopping and eating at Tlacolula Market, one of latin Americas oldest, largest markets. You can buy raw, sliced meat from one of the stalls, spring onions from another, and they’ll grill it for you! Then I zipped around, buying fresh tortillas from one lady, little bags of rice and beans from another, two plastic cups of salsa — and made my own feast!
Eating the best chocolate ice cream of our lives at Rito.
Mama mia!
Nadia Catarina Munno is best known to her 10 million social-media followers as The Pasta Queen, a glamorous, dramatic Italian who crumples her face in ecstasy and throws her fork across the room after slurping up a sauce-slicked noodle.
The fifth-generation pasta maker tells me how she carved out a career cooking spaghetti on social media, the biggest pasta crimes Americans commit and what she ate just 30 minutes after giving birth to her daughter.
Have a great weekend!
XO
Rachel Belle
Wow - that looks like a blast! Great tip on the Airbnb Experiences - will definitely look it up. Talking about colorful trips, have you been to Morocco? We took the family (including my 80 year old mother-in-law). She loved the camel riding adventure. When we went, we hired a dedicated tour guide for our time there - it was absolutely worth every penny, and I would recommend him to anyone considering a trip to Morocco!