Tamales and Parasites

Visited the school in Corozal, a neighboring community up the road from my house. There was a lot of interest in a youth team for this community. Friday is the reposteria, or cooking, class with the women of the cooperative. Watched the richest pizza I’ve ever seen cook (a whole stick of butter and cream too in the sauce!) My grandmother gave me some rice with cut up pieces of elote (baby corn). Awesome stuff!! The class was a fascinating study in women small-talk and girl-talk about everything from the intimacies of child-rearing to food preferences to dating. More chisme. It really is a group of peers. Felt really unprepared when they asked me on the spot to talk to them about ovens. Everyone wants one!  Highlight of the day was sitting the hammock with the youth looking through my family photo album. And I got to milk a cow!

Big Congrats to Sean on his Black Belt!! First time talking with the family. Was nice to debrief the experience so far. More house to house and made it down to the CICO. Met a male AVON representative and the head of the Community Bank. Sat in on the Bank meeting. The women need a confidence booster in math; it is especially stressful when money is involved and these are some of the poorest members of the community. 

 Rosaria, who is the mother of my host brother-in-law, making tamales, which are the sweet or plain version of nacatamels. She has to cut all the corn first.

 Then make the masa/dough. More hand-mixing. Also have to get all the half-ground kernels out.

After wrapping the tamales in corn leaves, you put them in a boiling pot of water over the raging fire!

First round of bacteria or parasite in site! Stayed close to the house all day and got to watch the whole nacatamales (different from regular tamales) process. Nacatamales have meat in them, in this case freshly killed duck and chicken. The duck kept bothering the chickens, so Lidia (host mom) tied it up and said it was not long for this world. There was actually a big bruise on it when we defeathered it from where she hit it with a rock. Found out later from the doctor that Nacatameles are kind of a crap shoot as to whether or not they cook through all the way. It was still amazing to watch my grandmother, mother, and sister, 3 generations of women working in assembly line fashion for hours for more than 30 nacatamales. I got to cut potatoes (failed at cutting tomatoes the Nica way!) The potatoes and rice are added to one or two pieces of meat on top of basic masa and then wrapped and tied in steamed plaintain leaves and put to boil and cook in a huge pot. It’s a whole day process!