Hot tamales, hot tamales, get them while they’re hot!
I have so many memories from growing up in a small town in Missouri. My hometown was about 7,000 people and not a Mexican restaurant in sight (not for at least 30 years). We used to go to town shopping and I remember a little man that stood on the corner with his tamale cart. We would tell him how many tamales we wanted and he would wrap them in newspaper and we would take them home to eat. They were the best — that is until my mother decided she was going to learn to make them.
My mother and a friend came up with a recipe and they would get together once a year and make hundreds of tamales. They would work all day, making the meat and mush, rolling the tamales, and tying them in bundles. At the end of the day, they would divide up their day’s work and put them in the freezer for us to enjoy during the year.
I lost both my parents within 6 months of each other in ’08. Over the last several months a lot of “food” memories have been popping up in my head — like the tamales, my dad going frog gigging in a boat that he made by welding two car hoods together — those huge platters of fried frog legs, what I wouldn’t give for a platter of them and seeing all of us around the table afterwards playing Indian poker. There are so many stories that I feel are responsible for my love of food and I am sure I will be sharing those from time to time.