Wednesday, 12 December 2007

• Tamale Making Day at Miss Emma Lee's

  Monday I went to Miss Emma Lee's house to learn how to make tamales. (You'll remember Miss Emma Lee from this summer when she taught us how to make cream puffs and homemade caramels. I had another lady try to teach me how to make tamales a few years ago but her recipe was so complicated that I never attempted it on my own. Mary (our tamale making teacher) had an easy recipe.

   

  Here is picture of the three 'older Titus 2 women' in Emma Lee's kitchen getting ready to teach us 'younger women' how to make tamales. I so appreciate them taking time out of their day to teach us.

  

  Mary is at the stove. She is our official teacher. Emma Lee is in the orange apron and my neighbor is standing next to her. Mary is getting the chilies ready to boil. They will be used for our sauce.

  

  Marie is mixing the shortening and baking powder into the masa in the picture above. She doesn't like to use the ready made mix.

  

  Here the ladies are rolling out the masa on top of the corn husks. We used wax paper so that the masa wouldn't stick to our rolling pins. Marie and her daughter are in the background. They attend my church. They were at my house earlier in the week watching me make candy. It's so much fun to get together and do a project with other ladies. We all said how much we enjoyed it.  Mary said she didn't know how to make a good pie crust so maybe I'll hold the next meeting at my house and share my fail-proof recipe.  

  

  Mary stacks her tamales differently than I was taught. It took nearly 5 hours to cook them and they were a bit on the dry side. I brought home some uncooked tamales and stacked them upright in my cooker. Mine cooked for 2 hours and were perfect. But, then I made a BIG mistake and left them in the cooker until it cooled down. By the time I took them out they were dry.
  
  Does anyone know how to moisten a DRY TAMALE? I'm wondering if I can pour just a bit of beef broth on the top of the meat mixture before I reheat them?

  We had a very enjoyable day. Oh, and I almost forgot one of the most important people in this whole process. Miss Josie our stenographer!

  

  She was so patient with all of us 'old ladies' and served us and helped us with such a servants heart. She took down notes on the whole process which I will try and type out soon. Thanks Josie! Love you for that!!

  Please be so kind to remember Miss Emma Lee in your prayers. She has 4th stage stomach and lung cancer. The Drs. did not expect her to live past a few months and it's been a year. She continues to tell them that only God knows how many days she has left! She is such an encouragement to all of us. She rarely misses church and comes even when she is in pain! I love her dearly!

  

   

   

   

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