Patience by way of Tamal!

The majority of those rounded up and deported were Guatemalan. There used to be a few stores owned and run by Guatemalans. There was only one left that I could find. There, I was able to find flour to make tamales/chuchitos, corn husks, and special chocolate to make choco-bananas. There is a difference between tamales and chuchitos, at least for some of us. In the USA, tamales are mostly thought of as small flour, meat, and cheese goodness wrapped up in a corn husk…In Guatemala, we call this a Chuchito. A tamale, or a tamal as we say, is actually a melt-in-your-mouth concoction wrapped in a banana leaf and usually about 3 times the size of a chuchito. So I made chuchitos for the first time, lots of them. I always knew they were time intensive, but never as much as they actually were to make. Mixing the masa; cutting the chile without touching anything else (even after washing several time I touched my lips and had a burn from the chile for a long time); soaking the corn husks,; choosing a small (inner shell) and large (outer shell) husk; tearing some husks to make the ties for the tamales; putting just enough cheese so that it doesn’t seep out of the masa enclave but not too little so that the tamal turns out dry; rolling and shaping the masa once the outer shell is on to make the small rectangular shape; tying it with a strip of husk without breaking it; steaming about 5 tamales at a time in our non-industrial stove top steamer for at least one hour for each batch; repeat 100 times.