Never a Year Without Tamales

On this day a year ago, my mother, Floria Valdez, became suddenly and unexpectedly ill. I managed to leave Washington in the midst of the worst snow storm in years and was there at her side until she departed on her birthday, February 8. It is still difficult to think about what this loss has meant to me. At the most unexpected moments, I remember her...when I hear a special song, when I want to brag about a personal achievement, when I want to talk about the funny things my students do, when I need to talk about my son. But most of all I think of her...when I'm in the kitchen.

My mother loved to cook and was a purist about the things she made, for example, her tamales. She was a stickler for making them just like her own mother had made them. Recently, my paternal cousin, Cotis, from Monterrey, Mexico, sent me a message on Facebook asking me if my tamales recipe came her mother's mother, our grandmother, Manuelita. Actually, no. Recipes for tamales are matriarcal, in my opinion, although Cotis' mother's tamales were delicious too. So, my family's way of making tamales comes from my maternal grandmother, Maria Garza Hernandez, my mother's mother who, during the season, had to make enough tamales for a family of twelve. Hard to imagine.

When it was time to make tamales, everyone got into the act, in a noisy conveyor-belt style. Even though we had our mother doing very strict quality control, each tamal was a funny reminder of the person who had wrapped it. Some were skinny, some were fat, some had too much meat, too many raisins, but you could recognize the person who had made it, somehow, when you unwrapped it. My mother liked 'delicate' tamales, in other words, tamales that were not heavy with dough but that were slightly thicker than a small sausage and she wanted just the right mixture of venison to pork meat. Our family's recipe called for raisins, and peeled chiles, turning the meat mixture a beautiful rust color and leaking the color slightly into the dough. We never bought our tamales. Heaven forbid! The making of tamales was a two-day undertaking, but my mother dropped everything to begin the process in the winter. We have never spent a year without my mother's tamales. This year, in fact, my sister, Laura, took up the tradition and made the Christmas tamales.

These days leading up to La Candelaria, the February 2 holiday celebrated in Mexico when tamales and champurrado are served, Gilda Claudine and I have been discussing whether we would make our tamales. After all, on January 6, we both, in the most unlikely coincidence, got the baby Jesus figurine in our slice of rosca cake (at two separate parties!). As the tradition goes, in the true spirit of Epiphany, we must provide the tamales and chocolate for La Candelaria. I have hemmed and hawed...knowing full well my schedule and her schedule and now the day has sneaked upon us! What to do? There are times one must adapt and adjust to what comes down. This year, Gilda Claudine, we will not be making tamales. We'll have to live with that and our friends will have to accept the chocolate or champurrado we serve with...panettone? My mother would have understood. I will post the family recipe as soon as my sister parts with it.