Tamales and Church

Tamales and Church

Since we are heading toward Easter weekend and have some time during the week-long holiday, we decided it would be nice to make tamales. Dry corn flour is available at the store, but I wanted to get the fresh ground stuff since it is readily available here. The mother of one of the teacher’s has an electric grinder and has access to getting the properly prepared corn. The corn that is used is the larger kernel corn like what is used for hominy. It is cooked in water and lye for about two days which causes the skin on the kernels to come off. After cooking, the corn is soaked in water and rinsed for a period of time and finally is ready to be ground. We acquired the masa, cooked and shredded a chicken and put it in a red chili sauce made from dried red chilis we bought at the market and found ourselves with enough ingredients for sixty tamales. We also made some containing roasted peppers and cheese. Hondurans use green banana leaves to wrap their tamales, but we made ours in the Mexican style by wrapping the masa and filling with corn husks. Hondurans do use corn husks for some “tamales,” but these are called churros when they are made with beans and chuchitos when they are made with meat. Chucho is another name for perro which is a dog, so a chuchito is a puppy, making these types of tamales “puppies.” If you ask for a tamale when chuchitos are being served, the Hondurans will look at you and say, “We don’t have any tamales.”

As we noted in our blog, we were planning on going to church last Sunday. Our landlord and family go to the Catholic Church and since we are helping with the alfombras sponsored by the Catholic church, we thought that would be a good place to go. I asked Amy the night before if we should ask them what time the service starts. Amy said no and that it started at around eight thirty. Sunday morning we headed to downtown and saw some people milling around outside the church. The doors were open with no-one inside so we sat down on the low wall in front. We waited for twenty minutes or so before Amy decided to ask a lady, who looked as if she was waiting also, what time the service started. The lady told us that there was a procession coming and when they arrived the service would begin. We sat and waited for another twenty minutes when a young man carrying a white cloth came out from inside the church. He was heading in the same direction that the lady had pointed, so we decided to do the sneaky and follow him. Maybe he was going to find the procession. I eventually caught up with him and asked him if he was going to join the procession, and indeed he was. As we approached the top of the hill we saw a large crowd of people standing in front and along the sidewalks of a small satellite building of the larger church downtown. The large crowd milling around visiting in the street stared at us when we walked by seeing that we were the only gringos around. We decided to sit on the curb and wait for the procession to begin. We sat for fifteen minutes or so and decided since we didn’t attend the church we ought not join the procession, so we agreed to walk to the market for some items we needed and give the procession time to proceed.

We spent about a half hour at the market then walked home to have a snack and I would periodically walk the block and a half to see if the procession was coming. After about fifteen minutes I ventured out on my small journey for an inspection and when I arrived at the corner I noticed a group of people crowding the entry and spilling out into the front yard of the church. I asked a man sitting on the corner of the sidewalk if the procession had arrived and he confirmed that it had. I turned around and returned home. Walking in the door I told Amy “ Well, we missed the procession.” “We missed it? You’ve got to be kidding?” she replied. After all of that waiting, in the blink of an eye we had missed it. We thought about going up to the church but there was no way of getting inside to hear the service. Maybe on Easter.