superbowl 2010

so...what do the zizak's eat on superbowl sunday? do you need to ask? mexican food of course! we do live in california people (says johnny). anyway, it's easy to make and economical and you can make a ton and have it turn out as delicious as if you make it for a party of one. that doesn't mean we have a ton of people over, of course. my superbowl philosophy...love it...love football...could care less about the parties...i'll cook all day and drink all day and pig out all day and enjoy the game, but i will not go hang out at other people's houses with a bunch of people i do not know and have no desire to hang out with...but anyone who knows me knows they are always welcome to stop by here and if you want to invite us and only us or us and people we know over...we'd love to spend time with you :)

back to the food...i think that's what this blog is supposed to be about. being a sunday we don't eat breakfast until after church, which ends up being brunch or lunch. today we opted for brunch and it consisted of pillsbury cinnamon rolls and milk...five satisfied customers, which is great for the short order cook (usually me, sometimes johnny). mid afternoon snack involved another instant and easy pleaser...blue corn chips with melted cheese...a.k.a. nachos...only 1 minute in the microwave. and for dinner...drum rolls please...homemade tamales, homemade guatemalan black beans and an attempt at spanish rice. i'm full from brunch and snack, but i'm definitely drooling thinking about supper...will the colts hurry up and win, so we can get to the pigging out?

i will say that i had a blast cooking today, while watching the game. this was my second time making homemade tamales and i had some feedback from the first time and some tweaking of my own that i wanted to implement. the two things that i really wanted to focus on were the masa consistency/spreadability and the amount of meat in each tamale. last time i had trouble spreading the masa, so i thought i should try and make it a little bit more moist. also, there was feedback that there should be more meat in each tamale for the amount of masa...which i agree with because although i love masa...it shouldn't be the bulk of the tamale...the meat should be.

all the key elements prepared and ready to be assembled

with those two things in mind i went to work. i increased the moisture of the masa, but found that i was having the same problem spreading it onto the corn husk thin enough to create a wide enough disk to increase the amount of meat. then by some random occurrence i started spreading the masa with the heel of my hand versus my fingers and wouldn't you know it the masa spread beautifully! i love discovering new techniques...of course this is probably what all the native tamale makers do, but i'm learning off the internet, so i don't have anyone showing me the best way to make these things. with that discovery increasing the amount of meat per tamale was easy. so, now i'm wondering if i really needed to make the masa more moist or if it was just my spreading technique. i really liked the consistency of the masa in my first batch, so i'll have to make a judgment after i eat some from this batch. anyway, without a doubt a fabulous cooking experience.

the only thing i would change about today is that i worked alone, as everyone else had things they had to get done. i am looking forward to suki growing up and helping me with tamales and teaching her my ever so particular way of doing things.

only 58 tamales this time!