Hot Tamales!!

Well today was Tamal making day.
I joined Dona Miriam (Jose's mom, wearing the cream shirt) and her friend 'Tita'. After they prepared the ingrediants all day yesterday & early in the morning today, we began to assemble the tamales at 9:30 and finished 3:30 this afternoon.
Tamales are the official Navidad (Christmas) food and every family has slightly different recipe and method of preparing them. Every fiesta for Navidad has tamales and it is a favorite of everyone that I have met. It starts with a paste made of (maiz)meal, the broth from cooking the pork, salt (sal) and a little sugar(azucar). It is similar consistency to pancake batter. The ingrediants we used were pork (cerdo), rice with orange coloring (arroz con achote) carrots (zanahoria), red pepper (chile dulce), 3 garbanzo beans & 3 raisins (pasas) which are the folded into 2 different banana leafs (hojas de banano). The first picture of the actual tamal is the normal version but the second one which is large (grande) is called a 'tonto' (which acutally means foolish). The final step is tying two talmales together which is called a Pina (which means cluster - and also pineapple). After boiling for 2 hours, they are served hot and will keep in the fridge for up to 6 months. Total we made 188 tamales or 94 Pinas & 2 Tontos. Whew!