Sundries and Tamales

First, two things and then MASSIVE picspam and recipe for tamales under the cut.

1. Has everyone forgotten how to count? If I hear one more time that we're in a new decade, I'll go bananas. When you count your fingers, do you start with 0? No. You start with ONE. 1 - 10, 11 - 21, etc. 2011 is the next decade. This is the LAST year of the "Aughts." I feel better getting that off my chest.
2. I have a request for those of you participating in my coins project, but I'm feeling very overwhelmed with my own To Do list, so give me a bit to organize that and I'll give it its own post. (And I've received packages from a few of you already, and it's so lovely and very exciting!)

But today I want to post about delicious, fantastico, muy muy bueno tamales. Growing up in Texas, they're a dime a dozen. (Well, times 70. If you didn't catch the math, that makes it 7 bucks. *g*) If you get quality meat in them, say venison or wild pork, it's more like 12 dollars a dozen (tamales are typically chicken or pork.) Making them? Priceless-- well, no, my total bill was less than 20 bucks for supplies, but I made 8 dozen, with loads of supplies left. (The meat came from a recent hunting expidition by the Mister.)

I don't mean to brag (that's a lie, I totally mean to) but I was told by a few people that were not strong-armed by me that these were the best tamales they'd ever had. If I may, this was my first time ever making them by myself, as well. They were so worth the effort.

( One tamale, two tamale, three tamale, four! Eat them all up and then I ask for more. )

This is one of those things that is time sucking but totally worth making. It's not technically difficult, it's totally gratifying to eat, and fun to put some good music on in the background and have a party atmosphere in the kitchen. My kind of fun. (Oh, and we ate the finished project with a dollop of low fat sour cream and salsa verde with refried beans and a salad on the side. OM NOM NOM.)