Hahahaha! Wait what was I talking about?

    Tamales, tamales, tamales! They have overtaken the house, but their invasion has not limited to the freezer. They have overtaken my father too!
    Little background- My dad is the scout master for the Spanish Branch of our church, in our area. To raise money for scout trips he thought of this idea of selling tamales. But not just any tamales, real authentic tamales rolled by the hermanas themselves! That's right- he got the women of the ward involved too. So the past few weeks the conversations around the dinner table have gone a little like this:
     Dad: "Hahahahah, Well I went over to the Garcia's to check on the tamales, and they were rolling them too thin, so I bought some tamales from the farmer's market to show them how big I want them. I also brought some more of the Garcia's tamales over here so we could try them out to make sure they are good"
    Mom: " I knew you were about to talk about the tamale fundraiser because you laughed first. You can never talk about the tamale sales without laughing first!"
    (It's so true- my father cannot talk about scouts or the tamale sales without laughing first!)
   Me: "Cool Dad! But does this mean we are going to have tamales for dinner again tomorrow night too? "
Like I was saying before- the tamales have taken over- but at a pretty good trade-off. Currently my dad has sold over 700 (I feel so bad for those ladies who are making them!) and they are pretty good too! I should know I have become quite the connoisseur lately.
   But all this tamale mayhem has made me wonder how they came to be. Like any person seeking knowledge I hopped onto the internet and the culinary-cooking-schools-institutes.com seemed like a pretty credible place to explore. What I found was not only a very interesting history of this delicious food, but also a hats off to the creativity of women. Apparently dating back as early as 5000 or 7000 BC women were taken to wars and battles as army cooks, and would prepare the masa for tortillas, along with meats. But as the tribes of the Mayan, Aztec, and Incan cultures grew, the demand of making the food became an extremely overwhelming process. But the women embraced the challenge and created the tamale! Now food was easily transported and easily eaten. There is no record of which tribe initially started making tamales first, but which ever tribe did was a trendsetter because everyone soon followed, and the tamale has been going strong ever since!

      Yes all of those bags house tamales, and those are only the ones in the freezer, we also have some in the fridge!