Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Getting Ready for Thanksgiving: Home Made Tamales

Tamales
Wifey is making tamales from scratch.   Well, except for the masa, which she bought freshly ground from a bakery.  Masa is like corn meal, only much finer.  It is corn dough.  It's the coating around the meat in tamales.

I have loved tamales since I was a small child.  I was fascinated by the funny paper wrappings around them and wondered how they made it.  Years later I realized that the funny paper was really the sheaves from corn husks.

Wifey is making regular meat tamales, but also sweet tamales, with raisins and pineapple and brown sugar.  When she isn't looking I swipe a spoonful of the mixed sweet masa and eat it raw. Yum!

She's also making a third kind of tamale, cheese tamales, with Monterey Jack cheese and mild Jalapenos (big Mexican peppers).

We will take a load of these tamales to the family Thanksgiving dinner in San Jose tomorrow.  They should be a big hit!

2 comments:

Adrienne said...

Those look wonderful. I haven't made homemade tamales in a coon's age. Definitely worth the work!

Always On Watch said...

Tamales for Thanksgiving? Why not?

This year, Mr. AOW and I had two Thanksgiving dinners, one of the traditional sort and the other authentic Chinese (at a Chinese client's home). I do think that the Chinese family may be more grateful for America than most of us; this family was born in Communist China, immigrated here legally, and are now American citizens who revel in their freedoms, particularly freedom of religion.