por batir la masa?!?!?!

At the end of every summer my family usually makes corundas. They are tamales de michoacan and they are sooo yummy. They are one of the most difficult tamales to make, in my opinion, but all that work is worth it. Instead of using the usual dried corn husk to wrap la masa we use the long fresh green corn leaves. Once the milpa gives off the elotes we use the leaves for the tamales, which is why we have to wait until the end of the summer to make these tamales. Unlike the usual tamales that we see in mexican restuarants, corundas don't have anything in the middle. It's just the masa. You would figure that because it's only the masa that we wrap the process would go alot faster, right? WRONG!! it's actually a unique crafty process to wrap the tamales in that long green corn leaf. You have to wash the leaf, crack it so that it is bendable to wrap the masa and then make sure you put la masa on the right side. You take the wider end of the leaf and slap a small amount of masa, once you have the masa in the leaf you fold the leaf over it and then again but on an angle this time and keep doing this until you come to the tip of the leaf, once you get to tip of the leaf, if you did it right, the tip gets neatly tucked under of those folds and VWALA!!! you have a corunda...did you get that? the tamal should end up looking like a diamond shape tamal...I told you it was difficult.

Anyway those are corundas and we do them every summer around mexican independence day to celebrate my sisters b-day...she was born on the 16th. She says that my mom hecho el grito de la independencia esa noche, no por lo orgullosa de ser mexicana pero por los labor pains. I know we still have a week before mexican independence pero "las hojas ya no van servir si nos esperamos hasta la otra semana"...so mom says. So hay voy para el southside on the weekend of the parade on 26th street...jeesh i should have stayed over starting friday evening because 26th street's traffic gets 10 times worse around these days!!! When i got to the parents house, my mommy was already making el caldo de pollo para empazar hacer el mole...las corundas se comen con mole o con costillas de puerco en salsa verde. "who else is coming to help out?" i asked my mom. "nadie" HA?!?WHAT?!?!?! QUE?!?!? COMO?!?!?! oh well that means it will be a small amount of tamales then. As i was thinking that my dad comes in with 15 pounds of masa!!! oh hell no!!! my ghetto side started to come out. "mommy we can't do all that by ourselves!!" "eso vamos a ver". My mom's job was to take care of doing el mole and las costillas. My job was to batir la masa and wrap los tamales...do you not remember the process of wrapping these things!?!?!? dona mama, i call her that de carino y respeto, was putting all "las brujerias" in the masa as i was batiendola. the masa was in this big tina as i knelt down kneating, como los gringos dicen, the dough...hehhehehe. God that's work, i've never done this by myself. it's usually me and my older sister that do the kneating. I had to wrap a hankerchief around my head because i was sweating so much...i didn't want anything going into the masa that wasn't supposed be in there. Once i finished batiendo la masa, we started wrapping the tamales. Two of my sisters had arrived and began helping out too. I was sooo tired while wrapping the tamales that i just grabbed the leaves and the masa and didn't care that the tamales weren't coming out diamond shaped. "nadamas con que la masa este tapada verdad mommy?" my mom gave me this look of "si dices tu?". The tamales ended up being delicious...i've heard que los tamales salen buenos porque la masa esta bien batida..hehehe.

After eating las corundas con mole at the parents I went back to my place.
i sat down to watch some t.v. with little kachito next to me. After a few minutes of watching t.v. i started to not feel well. i started sweating and my head began to hurt as well as the rest of my body. I decided to go to bed but it only got worse...i had a fever and i wanted to throw up. What was going on with me?!?!? Then i got really cold so i got underneath the covers, Kachito was looking at me like "are you crazy?!?!?! it's too hot to be underneath the cover!!!" i finally fell asleep and when i woke up in the morning i was feeling alot better. I called my mom to tell her what had happened to me, "eso fue por batir la masa". Ha!?!?! what?!?!? que!?!?! como!?!?!? That has never happened to me before, why now? "ya no estas tan joven" my mom responded. Gee, thanks mom!!!