hot tamales

You may remember girls night before the holidays.  Well, the first picture is of us eating tamales from a guy off the street.  Some how this prompted my friends to want to try to make some themselves - and invited me along to help!

First you have to make the masa - which is essentially lard and corn masa.  Yes, they are trying to use a smoothie maker thing to make the lard "light and fluffy".

We then made an assortment of goodies to go inside.

Next step is to spread the masa into a soaked corn husk, fill them and roll them up.

After steaming the trial batch...I think these pictures speak for themselves.

After making some adjustments to our masa...

We had so much fun and I'll be eating tamales for about a month!  YUM!!!