tamales

geez, it's been almost a week and i haven't written about our tamales experience. i need to get it out now. it happened sunday here at our house. we had krista and alan and peg come over and make them. it was a nice experience for them (who have never done them before and me, too).

krista came over saturday with the meat and we put it in the slow cooker overnight. by mid-morning it was falling apart and tasting great.

they all cme over after lunch and we got to work on the stuff. well, the women did. alan and i spent some time in front of the tube watching dallas trounce the lions.

but when it was time to make the dough, i went back in and started helping. it was different for me. we made the dough for the tamales from a flour-type of mixture and added the lard. i am not used to it. i'm used to it being a dough-like mixture and then adding the liquified lard and mixing it together. so it was a lot of trial and error. we made three patches of dough. i think they got progressively better. ultimately, though, i think we should have put in more lard. even if it had more lard than necessary, all we had to do was put in more mixture.

the beef filling was great. i could have eaten that all day long. we did a good job with that. i think on another occasion, we will work a little more with the dough.

we did have a slight problem with the c0oking part. too smoky. some of the corn husks were in bad shape and the steaming process caused them to get really burnt. we had the nice smell of burnt husks all over the house.

still, i've eaten quite a few of them and they've been good. i think we can make them even better.

right now dawn is making chicken tamales with the extra dough and some chicken we made sunday. i love chicken tamales. i remember when i first had them when tia gloria made them about five years ago. they were awesome. so spicy.

wel, thanksgiving today. it's snowy and damned cold. already taked with mom and dad. they're going over to tia gloria's house (along with the sibs0. i'll call them a bit later on. also going to call the aunts and uncles on dad's side, too.

we don't eat until nearly 4 p.m. at mary ann's house.