Hot Tamales!

Hubby's Mama paid us a nice long visit earlier this month and boy did we ever have fun!  All we did was cook and shop the entire time she was here.  The first day she was here, we made about four dozen flour tortillas.  I never make a batch that big and it seems like we stood in that kitchen for hours!  She never used measuring cups or spoons, just throws it all in a big bowl and somehow it turns out perfectly.  I, on the other hand, have a little recipe card tucked away in a wooden box and follow the instructions line for line and my tortillas never seem to turn out as good as hers.  Her mounds of dough, which she kneads in her hands one by one, are perfectly formed and ready to roll.  When she rolls them out, they all become precise circles of identical sizes, whereas mine are all jagged around the edges and tend to lean more toward the shapes of the states than round like they're meant to be. 

The next day, Hubby had a friend over and she cooked a crock pot of beans, a big pot of rice and made some carne asada with some of the venison we had from his last hunting spree.  The boys filled their plates and feasted!  Later that night, Mama put two big pork roasts to boiling on the stove and for four hours they cooked until the meat was falling off the bone.  We cooled the pot in a sink of cold water and after the meat had cooled enough, she pulled the meat apart with her fingers and set it aside in a big bowl for our cooking tasks the following day.

The next morning around 10:00, we decided to tackle the tamales.  Mama had mailed us her big, huge tamale pot and tortilla press ahead of time, knowing I wouldn't have those in my tiny little kitchen.  We set up a card table and some garden benches in the middle of the kitchen floor and she put the pulled pork to simmer in a skillet with spices.  We soaked the corn husks in a sink of water so they would become soft and pliable, and Mama started on the masa dough.  Again, here she goes with no measuring cups or spoons.  She just dumped the whole bag of masa into a bowl and started adding warm chicken broth and lard until it was the perfect consistency.  She kneaded the dough with her hands and had masa meal up to her elbows!  Once the masa was done, we took the corn husks out of the sink and she plopped a gob of dough into each husk and spread it out evenly with her fingertips.  My job was to fill the husks with meat and roll them up tightly, tucking the end of the husk underneath to form a perfect tamale.  We sat there for hours filling one after another until we had eight and a half dozen tamales all stacked up on trays.  By 2:00 we were ready to put them into the pot.

Our neighbor had loaned us his outdoor turkey fryer and we used the propane burner to cook our tamales out in the backyard.  We managed to squeeze every single tamale into that big pot with barely an inch to spare, and we put it on the burner to steam.  In a couple hours, our backyard smelled heavenly!  We cooked them back there until about dark and then they were done.  Yum!

The next night, after a day of shopping in town, we made chicken enchiladas and had leftover rice and beans and fresh guacamole.  I'd never eaten so much Mexican food in one single week!  I must have gained 10 pounds in the 11 days she was here, but boy was it ever worth it!

The day after I tearfully took her to the airport for her trip back home, I felt like a zombie.  I was exhausted and lonely and didn't know what to do with myself in that quiet house without her.  It was such a whirlwind of activity for the past two weeks and all of a sudden I felt like I'd hit a brick wall.  Her bedroom was all made up as though she'd never been there, and even Tubby was walking room to room wondering where his Nana had gone.  The only sign that she'd been there was the freezer full of tamales, a few tortillas left on the kitchen counter and a heart full of memories we'd shared while she was here.  Thank you Mama, for everything!  We love you and miss you!