Another week gone by. We are reaching the 6 month mark. Wow. The time has really flown by. We found out this week that our son Joel and his wife are expecting a baby in October. That will make 30 grandchildren for us, counting our two step-grandsons. With five boys they are really wanting a girl so we are all thinking pink.
Monday, instead of having our usual lesson with our FHE group (for the third week in a row) we ended up having another party, sort of. We met at Maricarmen and Ricardo Villalonga's home [ the landlords of the Shaklee's and Spencer's], so she could teach us how to make tamales. Well, she demonstrated but I don't think I will be able to duplicate it. She didn't use a recipe and it was a lot of shake some of this and that into the mix and tasting to see if it was enough. I learned that the trick to good tasting tamales is all in the sauce. The sauce was made by cooking dried peppers with seasonings and then using the blender. Some of this sauce was mixed into the masa harina that was bought pre-made along with lard. She cooked pork roast, chopped it fine, and added the rest of the sauce. We helped spred the dough out on the corn husks, which was a bit tricky because it had to be very thin. Maricarmen would fix what we did before she spread the meat mixture on and that was just in very small portions. We learned later that if you have too much of either it makes for a big pile in the cooker that is pushed out of the end of the corn husks. These are then stacked in a large kettle on top of corn husks, more corn husks are placed on top along with a cloth then the broth from cooking the pork is carefully poured on. I'll send you a link to the pictures I took. I should have taken pictures of use spreading the dough on the corn husks but my hands were oily from the dough. After they were steamed for about 1 hour we had a delicious meal, eating as much tamales as we could hold. We made over 200 and each of us took some home. It was fun and the Villalongas are wonderful, friendly people. We were going to have the lesson after making the tamales but it took so long that we just ended up enjoying the eating of them and visiting with each other.
This process of making tamales on February 1st and 2nd is actually a tradition here in Mexico. February 2nd is the official end of the Christmas season. On January 6th the Rosca de Reyes or Three Kings Bread is served and whoever gets the little replica of the baby Jesus in the bread are supposed to give tamales to the one who gave them the bread on February 2nd, which is "El dia de la Candelaria" or the day of the Candle or Light, known as the Day of Purification. It's a big thing to have tamale dinners as part of this day of celebration.
Here's a link that talks about the Christmas traditions:
http://www.nacnet.org/assunta/nacimnto.htm
The Hall's had car trouble this week. Luckily, we were working the same shifts on Wednesday and Thursday with them so we just went in early and took them. It had something to do with the ignition system. It wouldn't start when they were ready to leave the temple on Tuesday night.
Today in Sacrament meeting, Juan Sergio Hernandez gave his testimony and mentioned that today marked 50 years from the day he and his family were baptized. I mentioned the Hernandez family in my letter two weeks ago. [I actually need to make a correction on that, by the way. I said that they joined the church in 1970 but it should have been 1960].
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