Champagne Confetti Co. on pinterest.com/champagnecon/
I’ve been busy with tamale making for the past three days. We added an extra day for the vegan tamales.
Tamale making (or tamalada) is something my family prepares for days ahead and that I’ve talked about in previous years.
For Christmas, there are ingredients we use for our tamale making session and for Mexican traditional beverages: Champurrado, Ponche, and Rompope. Personally, I don’t make ponche or rompope because I’d be in the kitchen for an additional day.
These ingredients are hard to find unless you live in Southern California. We have several Mexican supermarkets in the city where I live. There is no “Hispanic” aisle in these stores. The whole store stocks Mexican products.
It’s not unusual to see this:
The sugarcane is used to make Ponche. If one wants an alcoholic addition to this beverage, you’d pick up these:
Rompope is an eggnog-like drink with eggs, cinnamon, and rum. A couple of these and you’re not fit to make tamales anymore.
I enjoy the family time where we don our aprons, grab our butter knife or spoon to spread masa, and reminisce about Christmas tamalada’s past
After the hours of spreading masa on ojas (corn husks), folding, lifting huge pots with four dozens of tamales within, we sit and relax a bit. This is when I start making the champurrado.
Two hours later, the tamales are ready. We enjoy them with a cup of champurrado, this year doused with a little Irish cream, and enjoy a late evening movie.
Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and feliz navidad to everyone!
alvaradofrazier.com 
Felix navidad to you too, and your family! I love going to shops with ‘foreign’ products, wish I could be with you and learn to make tamales!🎄
LikeLiked by 1 person
And a tarde feliz navidad a tu y tu familia. Or usted if you prefer. I never did get good at figuring out which to use when. In person, for safety’s sake, I tend to use usted and end up feeling like the equivalent of someone speaking Shakespearean English.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Muy bueno, Elena! Tu is fine, Usted is like Shakespearen English unless you’re in Mexico and the person is older than you- then don’t use TU 😆
LikeLiked by 1 person
Fair enough. Tu eres mucho mas joven que yo and believe me, I don’t insist on usted. Is Mexico more likely to use usted than other Spanish-speaking countries or than Spanish-speakers in the U.S.?
LikeLike
I’d say so, in general but you always say Usted to your mother.
LikeLike
I made tamales one year with my family. We were trying to do the traditional Mexican Christmas activity, but we weren’t brought up that way, so it didn’t “take”! Too much work! What is Rompopo? Never heard of it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Eggs, cream, rum are the main ingredients; think of spiked eggnog.
LikeLike