Tuesday, August 15, 2017

94 Years Remembered in 94 Days-Post 39 (Tamales, ketchup, and sweet pickles)





Another memory from Saturday night--tamales, which are my comfort food.    Before we left Douglas Sunday a week ago, a dear friend, Maritza, brought me three doxen tamales.    I always buy the ones that her aunt makes and they are delicious.  She said that she had some in the freezer that she kept for the family so she brought them to me before we left.

Saturday night, after a long week and a morning meeting, I didn't think I would be fixing dinner.  However, plans changed and Cameron wanted tamales.  So we pulled out a dozen and I put them on the stove to warm them.

It brought back so many memories.    I consider a lot of Mexican food comfort food after growing up in Douglas.    But the humorous part of this is that growing up whenever we  had tamales, my mom and Teresa (and many other family members) would eat them with ketchup.   I don't like ketchup very much so I never did.   When I asked about it, the response was that when our Irish grandparents moved to the Mexican border in the early 1900's, they had not had a lot of foods with chili in them.   So ketchup helped with the taste of hotness.     Whenever we had a family reunion and served tamales, I had to have a large bottle of ketchup available.

The other thing I remember was when Mary made her delicious red chili enchiladas, they always had sweet pickle relish on the side.  Once again, I don't like sweet pickle relish, so I never ate that.   I guess being born on the border and growing up there, I am okay with "hot" stuff.   Although I really don't like things that are so "hot" you can't taste it--unlike my cousin, Cecilia!

So many great memories keep coming up on a regular basis.   I am writing this in red for the "hotness," the "red chili" tamales, and  of course, "ketchup."

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