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!
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