Asides

Today we made tamales from scratch, starting with shucking the corn and slicing it off the cob.  It was only by chance that either Wally or I didn’t lop off a digit in the process.  The women seemed more adept at handling the knife but you would expect Wally’s wife to be since she’s a chef.  After adding a little water to the corn we trooped down the street to grind the corn into something resembling grits.  Back at home we slapped the grits on a corn husk, added some chicken and wrapped our raw tomale in the husk for cooking.  There were so many hands helping me when I rolled mine that I can’t really say I made a tomale but I am now familiar with the process.  Cooking over a wood fire in an area, it couldn’t really be called a kitchen, with  no chimney took over an hour.   Fortunately there were enough gaps in the corrugated metal roof to vent most of the smoke.  Neither the omnipresent flies nor the skinny chickens seemed inconvenienced.