Christmas Means Tamales

When I was about four or five, I received a red wagon for Christmas.  I specifically remember this gift in particular because as much as I enjoyed MY gift; I always had to relinquish the wagon on Saturdays so we could haul the tamal stockpot around the neighborhood.  At least, I always thought it was my Christmas present and to this day none of my brothers or sisters have told me any different, so I guess that must be true.

My career as a tamal entrepreneur continued and when I was seven it even added to my education in an episode I always refer to as the math lesson.  We were living in Winslow by this time, and one of my weekend chores was always to take the tamal wagon, remember it was MY wagon, around the neighborhood and sell tamales.  One particular Saturday in the fall of 1953, I was traipsing around the neighborhood as usual and I decided to stop at Mrs. Miller’s house to see if she would buy some tamales.  Mrs. Miller was the first grade teacher at the neighborhood elementary school and a wonderfully nice lady.  I politely asked if she would buy some tamales.  I think mostly not wanting to disappoint me, she asked about the pricing, Proudly I announced “$2.00 a dozen or $0.15 each” as my mother had carefully instructed.  Mrs. Miller immediately got this quizzical look on her face and pondered the pricing.  She then inquired about 6 tamales; a widow living alone had no need for an entire dozen of them.  I pronounced authoritatively,  “$1.00.”  This she pondered for a brief second, then knowingly offered, “ I will take three tamales.”  I of course immediately upon presenting the three tamales knew the price was $0.45, $0.15 X 3 is easy.  As soon as Mrs. Miller had the tamales, she looked and pondered and almost immediately jumped  “I’ll have three more.”  I very quickly learned to price individual tamales at more than the dozen price divided by 12 not less than the amount.  

One of mother’s tenets of cooking, especially tamales, was perfection or something approaching that.  Even though there would be a mess in the kitchen from all the tasks and people involved in making the tamales, we always adhered to cleanliness around the production of our food and a keen eye (or should I say taste) to the recipe.  Some of the family secrets you will discover are actually just common sense, especially if you have mother’s sense for cooking. 

The first secret you learn when cooking in our family, is that if you add salt to ANYTHING, you must add the salt in the sign of the cross.  Saying a prayer along with that is also highly recommended.  Mother also had a rosary, which always appeared whenever we started on the task of making tamales.  This is a tradition we still maintain, I do not know if it helped or not, but the tamales seem to taste better when we do it, so I do not intend to take any chances.

Before you dismiss the rosary as superstition or urban myth, I will tell you that three years ago I was at the home of my niece and goddaughter Regina Melendez’ earlier than the others mixing the masa as I usually do.  In our haste to get started, Regina and I forgot to take out the rosary and say our starting prayer, more than an hour later the masa still would not rise.  In fact, when we remembered the rosary and said our prayer, the masa rose within ten minutes.  You may call it coincidental, but that is a little to close for comfort for me, my rosary is at my mixing bowl to stay.  I wouldn’t want to get on mom’s bad side when making tamales.

One of the other secrets that I learned over time is that you must put your love into the effort.  I suppose that is why we have always insisted on making tamales together.  It seems like every year somewhere around mid October I will get a call from one of my sisters asking for my November and December week-end availability so we can plan on making tamales.  They tell me it just doesn’t taste the same if I don’t make at least one batch of masa (masa is the corn dough used to make the outer shell of the tamal.  We knead this in 15 – 20 lb., batches so it is a strenuous process).  That must be the case, because my sisters wouldn’t want me just for my “strong” back would they?

We shared many joyous hours over various tasks associated with making tamales and laughing about previous years’ events around the tamal “factory.” 

The tradition of Christmas tamales is a long, strong and ever endearing one in our family; it remains so to the extent that Yolanda insists on making tamales with us for Christmas.  But wait, she’s 3,000 miles away in North Carolina!  Never fear, creativeness and cunning will always prevail.  Yolanda finds out which weekend we are getting together and makes her tamales with us in memory of our dear “Lalita,” our mom and eternal family matriarch.  To say that Lalita does not continue to lead us in our daily lives would be a gross understatement.  Her force and guidance drives the efforts of this project and her loving hand is in the middle of every recipe in this book, even the ones she didn’t teach us to make.  Had she not had us all involved in the daily efforts of just surviving, none of this would have been possible.