Making Tamales

Vanessa and I had the experience of making tamales with some widows who were making tamales for a fund raiser for thier church. It was fun seeing the process. Vanessa was stirring, wrapping and laughing as she spoke to the ladies in Spanish. I smiled and tied the tamales and placed them into the container ready to be placed in the cookers. I didn't speak much Spanish, but they interacted with me as if I did. It was an all day project. The cookers were set on concrete blocks and then wood was placed under it. The not so good part was they used plastic to start the fires. If you think about it, plastic is a great starter, but of course it is a bit toxic and not so good for our environment, but their concern is using the resources they had. After a long day of stirring, folding, tying, and cooking, the tamales were ready to be sold. We jumped in the van and drove around the streets asking people to buy tamales. It was an interesting experience. The funny part was we sold some tamales to a lady that we knew that owned a business and she was having a big sale with cameras. Inadvertantly we ended up on T.V. two gringos (me looking like a tourist with my camera around my neck because I didn't want to leave it in the car) carrying a tub of tamales down the street. What a fun day.