New Years Tamales

I love New Years. Every year I meet my little sister or her husband at the store Smith and Edwards and pick up my nieces. Yesterday afternoon I met Kim and Dennis and grabbed the girls. Today,

Jon and I spent most of the day making tamales. I started the pork last night before I went to bed. It cooked all night and was very nice and tender this morning. I taught Jon how to make the red sauce and the masa.  Once that was done, it was time to assemble the tamales. Jon and I  made the first batch and put them in the steamer. Then the girls came and finished the second batch. It is a little tricky to spread the masa on the corn husk without it sticking to everything. You also want it to be nice and thin, so that when you eat the tamale there is a good balance of meat and masa. I had fun teaching the girls how to roll the tamales. I also made chili verde for Jon and I take to a New Years Eve party at Aaron Butterfields. Aaron is one of Jon's co-workers. We were headed there, with some other families from Jon's work, to watch a football game and eat. The girls were going to stay home and have their own party. It took an hour and half to steam each batch of tamales. We made about 70 tamales.

We had a nice time at the Butterfields. Sam loved playing with all the kids. I don't think the other families were very fond of mexican food. They only ate a few tamales and no chili verde. I always worry that my food is no good when people don't eat it, but Jon assured me that it was really good. We came home about 10pm and spent the rest of New Years with the girls. We watched the ball drop in New York city on TV. Sam was the only one that wanted to go outside and bang pots and pans at midnight this year. I will have to start coming up with new traditions because the kids are getting older and apparently banging pots and pans aren't their thing anymore.