Christmas in March

Every year my families make tamales. It's a tradition that both my families (my husband's and mine) have continued with our siblings. It was what our great-grandparents did, our grandmother's and our Mom's. And now, we do it each year in preparation for Christmas. It's an expensive time-consuming task and many hands are needed on tamale day. But, prior to tamale day, the meat needs to be cooked overnight, shredded into small pieces and the spices added. The chilies are cleaned, simmered and placed in the food processor to create the perfect paste for adding to the meat and the masa (cornmeal dough). The corn husk are soaked in boiling water overnight.

The finished product makes all this work and coordination so worth it.  We make enough to hopefully last us until the next tamalada making event.

When we were growing up our mom's would stay up all night cooking the tamales and then would freeze them. These days, we freeze the finished tamales raw, until we are ready to eat them. This makes them so much fresher than the previous method.

So my nephews were in town for a friend's wedding and we decided to have a brunch. I was tasked with bringing the tamales. I recalled I had some in my freezer from our December tamale making.  I pulled them out and added 1 cup of water and put them to cook for 30 minutes. They came out so good! And transporting them was so easy. I just unplugged the cord and detached it and took them in the Bella. My family was impressed that we had homemade tamales in March.  They tasted just as good as when we had them for Christmas. Bella one more time came through!