TAMALE MAKING FACTORY!

This past week Coleen, Jeanie, Susan and I and kids all were together to mass produce tamales to put in the freezer.  I did not quite grasp just how many tamales they were really planning on making!!  Jeanie brought 50 chickens to give you an idea!! 

Treva and Aunt Betty seeding the chile's.  Jeanie (and I ) were de-boning the chickens.

 chile's and garlic getting ready to go in a pot to boil.

 Susan stirring the red sauce.  We were glad she was so happy to be stirring the pot because when I had my turn I found out it was a very difficult job to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pot!

 Getting thick.

 What better place than Oak Bar to be doing this job!!  All the burners were full most of the time with the pots!

 Coleen stirring the pot and Treva taking a smell of the the red hot chile's!!

Don't get too close, Treva, because it is getting spicy in the kitchen!!  Aunt Jeanie put this towel on her head to try to keep the spicy chile steam away!!  We all started sneezing and coughing when Coleen made the spicy batch of red sauce!!

 YEAH, it is time to finally start rolling the tamales!!

 Polenta on the bottom, red sauce,..

 and add the chicken and olive,...

 Coleen showing us how to roll the tamales.

Aunt Betty used to help her mom make tamales to sell, so she showed us how to tie the tamales after a second wrap.

 Our tamales changed in size from the first day to the last.  They ended up getting more fat and squat, which is what Aunt Betty said they were supposed to be like!

 But, maybe it had something to do with Grandma Sherry helping out!
Here, I am pouring more red sauce into the pan that we were using with our assembly line to make the tamales.

 Grandma Sherry put a lot of polenta in the tamales.

 Susan helping Aunt Betty tie the tamales.

On Saturday we had made 441 tamales and ran out of paper for wrapping, as well as olives.  One thing to remember is that we are splitting the tamales between 4 large families and Gpa Mark & Gma Sherry, Aunt Judy and Aunt Betty!  We still had at least 2 pans full of red sauce, chicken, so after much thought and conversing, we decided that we would have to all get together to complete the tamale making!!  You could say that tamales making with the Crawford's is a tradition from very old days.  Aunt Betty said the last time she made tamales was 1947.  We enjoyed listening to her talk about the old days when she used to help her mom make tamales when she was a girl.