Shrimp tamales...what next?

Just when we think we have seen it all, we get yet another surprise. One evening, we had become quite tired of studying and needed a break. Not only did we need a break, we also needed some practice speaking our Spanish we were learning. So, we went outside to see what aunti and uncle were doing. Uncle was sitting sedately on the porch just watching aunti in her kitchen.

Her kitchen is outdoors under a thatched roof. It is where uncle starts the fire every time she is ready to cook. It is where the laundry is done, the dishes are washed, and food is prepared in small or large quantity. The so called “house” is really only a bedroom with a bed, television, a dresser, some nails to hang up clothes and other assorted necessities, and with boxes for storing this and that under the bed or anywhere on the floor something else isn’t taking up the space. There are chairs but they are outside as much or more than inside as they even watch tv from outside on the porch where a breeze might blow and cool them off a bit.

So, John sat down with uncle on the porch and watched me enter the kitchen with aunti. She had a basket of small live shrimp and a bowl of green sauce into which she was putting handfuls of these shrimp. She continued to push them under the green liquid until they gave up surfacing. She proudly told us about going to the nearby river and netting in the shrimp. She showed us the bag of them in the freezer and another bag in the refrigerator that had already been boiled. But, the shrimp she was drowning in the sauce were neither boiled nor dead. We visited for some time and then headed back to the books.

Today, when we reached home, she came running saying, “esperame” which means “wait for me”. She grabbed up a pretty clear glass bowl and grabbed a handful of tamales to put in it. Yes, you guessed. They were shrimp tamales made from their home grown and ground corn and those shrimp that had succumbed to the thick herbal chili sauce.

John didn’t feel too inclined to try them. I pulled the whole shrimp out and ate the tamales. They were very tasty!

When in doubt, pull the bugs out and eat the rest!