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| The corn dough gets really thick and heavy when it's almost done cooking. |
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Today I was invited over to the house of four school principals to learn how to make Christmas tamales. They're made with a corn-water-salt-vegetable lard dough, filled with a chunk of pork, two pepper slices, and an incredible tomato sauce wrapped in special leaves from the coast. We started working on them at 8 this morning, and ate them just before 8 tonight - a long day of work, but worth it! We also made Ponche - a mix of all fresh fruit (coconut, pineapple, papaya, apples, jocote, grapes...) with cinnamon and sugar, all boiled together for an hour. Their whole family is staying awake until midnight (which is like New Year's here) to go to mass and to light fireworks and firecrackers while drinking a coconut-rice hot drink. I'd loved to have stayed, but I am sooooo bone tired from working in the kitchen all day! It was a really fun day and kept me from being too homesick for Christmas with my family.
Oh my goodness! Wonderful pics! The baby of Olivia is so much bigger than when I saw him! And firecrackers and fireworks to see Christmas day in? Shoot, that happens every morning there. Hard to beat those early morning pipe bombs:-) I would think it might be novel and nice to celebrate xmas morning with silence for once! Hee hee.....
ReplyDeleteBeautiful pictures! Bethany K said that her host family had 25 meters of fire crackers to let off. She also spent an entire day helping to make Christmas day tamales... and they've had tamales for most meals ever since. :)
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