On 12/10/2013 12:21 PM, sf wrote:
> Christmas has traditional tamales... my ex-niece in law would cook a
> whole turkey in mole sauce and serve tamales made with a variety of
> fillings, but she told me corn (the corn permeated the masa and it was
> kind of sweet) was traditional for Christmas - at least in her family.

When I still lived in west TN I finally ventured into a Mexican market.
(I hate going into those places because no one speaks English and I
don't speak Spanish. I asked if they had tamales. They sold me some
frozen tamales... okay, I hadn't yet worked up to making them from
scratch.) Well, they were corn tamales... the corn wasn't in the masa,
it was the filling with some sort of cheese (queso blanco? oaxaca?).
But the tamales were sickly sweet. Absolutely not what I was looking for!

I gather the small Mexican market on St. Helena makes fresh tamales (as
best as I can understand them) but you have to get there at the right
time of day. Again, no one speaks English. I do go in there
occasionally to buy a can of menudo. I'd try making menudo myself if I
could find honeycomb tripe.

Jill