It is so hot in the house today. I've been cooking for around 3 or 4 hours and I'm spent. It was probably too ambitious of me, but I tackled tamales and strawberry jam for the first time today!
I started with the jam. There was a really easy recipe on allrecipes.com that didn't call for any pectin, only strawberries, sugar and lemon juice. So I bought the jars and lemon juice at the store and whipped up a batch with my 3 year old daughter. She was "strawberry jammin" (you have to have watched Strawberry Shortcake Spring for Strawberry Shortcake to know the reference). It didn't take long before the batch was ready to go into the jars. I poured it all in and water bathed it and am hoping that my jam will not be moldy when it comes time to use it because I've never jarred/canned before today! :)
There are 5 1/2pint jars of jam - so we'll probably be set for jam for quite a while! Maybe someday soon I'll take on peanut butter............
Then there were the tamales.... There is no quick easy recipe for tamales - they take more work and prep and time than anything I have made recently. Oh, but I really LOVE them. I'm dying to eat them for dinner!
I'm a vegetarian, and I got the idea of making cheese tamales from a woman who sells them at the local farmers market. However, while at the store I found some non-GMO vegetarian chorizo and was excited to use it for my tamales.
I made about 25 tamales and plan on freezing a bunch of them because this is not a job I want to take on anytime soon! Maybe while I'm on maternity leave I'll have the time to do it - I just wonder if I'll have the ambition!
