A lesson in making tamales

First step is to clean the banana leaves.

This is Roberto showing me how it's done.

So I gave it a try. Not that difficult really.

Lots of garlic is added to the broth.

Apparently there are hundreds of different recipes, but the ingredients we used were pork, corn paste (masa), rice, carrots, red pepper, olives, prunes and cilantro.

Then we had to put them together... Roberto put the masa and rice on the two banana leaves then he would pass it to me where I added all the other ingredients.

Once all the ingredients were added, I wrapped it like a Christmas gift.

Once it was tightly wrapped, Adriana put two tamales together and would tie them with string so they didn't unravel.

We made 80 tamales and these are ready

Roberto built a fire outside with a large pot to cook the tamales. They had to cook for one hour.

This rainbow has nothing to do with making tamales except as we were outside cooking, there is was. It seems we live in the land of rainbows. They are a regular occurrence.

Later, we all ate tamales together. They were pretty tasty! And the company of good friends made the whole experience even better! Perhaps we've discovered our new Christmas tradition.