Christmas Tamales
Isabel Rubio: “Today we’re making tamales. Tamales are a real big tradition in Latin America, much like Turkey is at Thanksgiving or Ham is at Christmas here in the states. So we decided, well, you know, maybe this is something we should try and do to bring more — introduce more of the Latino culture to Birmingham, through food. I mean, what better way to get to your heart than your stomach?”
Guermo Castro: “Obviously, all around Mexico you’ve got different kind of flavors — it’s all the same way. It’s a corn dough, basically, stuffed with whichever you want to do. You celebrate Christmas inviting your friends, your neighbors, your family, and while you’re praying and singing, your tamales are steaming in the kitchen.”
Eva Tal: “I’m making the pork with salsa. This is going to go into the tamal with the masa. First we have to cook the pork, because it takes a long time for the pork to cook. So we cook the pork and then we make the salsa and pull apart the pork and mix it all together.”
Castro: “You can feed the masses when you have your Christmas parties at home and you just have 100 or 200 tamales ready and steamed for everybody to get a bite.”
Rubio: “We approached this with some trepidation and didn’t want to be slammed at the last minute, so we said we’ll do this on a pre-order basis — but of course the pre-orders kept coming in way after the deadline, I took one just about an hour ago! It’s been incredibly successful and we are very pleased. We have orders for more than 1,100 tamales.”
Hector Estrada: “I’ll mix tomatoes and put a little water and something like that. Some salt too. Mix fast! It’s good!”
Rubio: “The finished product, the finished tamale is a little bundle wrapped in corn-husks. Little bundles of corn meal and meat and all sorts of yummy things and they look — they look very good! They’re about as big as a dollar bill that’s folded in half. Bite-size, really yummy. Now we’re going to put these in these special tamale pots that we have and steam them for a couple of hours and then they’ll be ready to be partitioned off and bundled up to fill the orders that we have.”
Rubio: “OK, this is probably our largest order…”
Customer: “Probably is… Just so it makes you feel better, I am buying for other people, I have four other orders…”
Rubio: “Good! Thank you, we love that!”
Customer: “People were so excited…”
Rubio: “OK, 90 bucks.”
Other customer: “Did you get any sleep last night?”
Rubio: “This was the night of the tamales… the annual night of the tamales… and Feliz Navidad! Gracias!”
Customer: “(mumbles) A tradition…it just became our tradition now!”
Research on metal-organic frameworks gets the chemistry Nobel Prize
Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi will share the prize. Their structures can "capture carbon dioxide, store toxic gases or catalyse chemical reactions," the committee said.
Pumpkin: A favorite sign of fall, with a bit of shady history
Pumpkins are a harvest symbol and part of our nostalgia for a simpler time. But while the word "pumpkin" has been around for centuries, the plant dates back thousands of years.
Hundreds of hikers rescued from Mount Everest after severe snowstorm
About 900 hikers, guides and other staff who were stranded by a weekend snowstorm on the Chinese side of Mount Everest have reached safety, state media said late Tuesday.
The costs of Israel’s longest war, for Israelis
Israelis are paying heavy costs for the longest war in their history: a mental health crisis, trauma, unprecedented division during wartime, animosity abroad and apathy for Palestinian suffering.
Democrats take legal aim at ‘the Radical Left’ language during shutdown
Democrats and a federal union argue that Trump administration language posted on federal agency websites and some emails blaming a shutdown on the "Radical Left Democrats" violates a 1939 federal law.
These numbers show how 2 years of war have devastated Palestinian lives in Gaza
It's been two years since Hamas-led militants attacked Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. In response, Israeli leaders promised a punishing offensive. Here are some numbers showing the war's toll.