There was Carla Martinez the other day, heaving a large pork butt onto the check-out counter down at the Soup ‘R Market. Next from the depths of her basket came bag after bag of (set ital)masa harina(unital). This being winter, this means only one thing: it’s tamale time!
So I said the obvious, of course. “Tamale time, Carla?”
“You know I make tamales for my family every winter. Tomorrow’s the big day. My aunt’s coming over to help, and maybe one of my granddaughters. We like to do it together, you know. It doesn’t make sense to make just a few, so we all get together and really get tamale-ing around here. It’s so nice. We’ve been doing it so long we each know our own jobs. There’s the boiling and the wrapping and all the stuff that goes with it.”
She grinned as spice after spice followed the masa onto the counter.
“It’s traditional in our family, of course,” she said, “but now there’s something new.”
“New?”
“Oh yes. My daughter, Gloria. Married that guy from San Francisco, you know? He is one of these nutrition student guys. Says it’s bad to eat anything that ever had blood pressure, you know? He’s one of these people who thinks he’s hurting his hair every time he goes to the barber shop, so he just doesn’t. And my Gloria, she is doing the same thing he is. You know, running 50 miles before breakfast, drinking tea that isn’t even brown, living on fruit and broccoli.”
She tsk-tsk-ed and smiled. “So now,” she said, “Gloria started in on my tamales. ‘Make them with tofu, Mama’” Carla mimicked. “Tofu! You know what that is? Bean slime. Make tamales out of that? Hey, I make a couple out of turkey for them, and if they don’t like turkey, they just don’t get any, I guess.”
She looked disgusted. “You know what it is, don’t you? Tofu tamales? It’s un-American!”
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