palace of winds

So sleepy. Usually I love fall Daylight Savings because you get this wonderful extra hour — the last two years I used it to sleep off Halloween parties, but I’m not sure where it went this year. Eaten, perhaps, by my inability to sleep until 8 a.m. no matter what time I go to bed.

Jo and I deviated from tradition this year and went to Maria’s party, which involved tasty food and much less alcohol and much more Pictionary and a pumpkin full of lighter fluid & fireworks, and was delightful. (And I don’t say that just because my team won at Pictionary. I really would’ve called it a tie; at the finish line we battled it out with Jo’s team through god knows how many rounds, so it was really just luck of the draw. …of the cards, not in a horrible punning way.) I went as Red Riding Hood, because I only decided on Friday to go and it was the only thing I could think of to make on such short notice. All the hood patterns I found online were some combination of complicated and baffling, so I wasn’t entirely pleased with how it came out, but I didn’t end up wanting to put it up at all so it didn’t matter.

I spent most of yesterday making tamales. Everything I read about them promised they were this arduous all-day affair best done with lots of people to share the work, etc etc, and I couldn’t quite believe they were that difficult — though I also know how much time it takes to roll sushi and make parathas and dolmades. In all my experience so far, individually-wrapped portions equals lots of time spent wrapping.

Verdict: it probably would be a very fun activity to do with other people who like things like standing in the kitchen for four hours on a Sunday afternoon. But it was also nice on my own; sort of meditative, leisurely. I finished listening to Mrs. Dalloway and, out of anything new, started Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell again. I made fillings and soaked corn husks and made masa dough (such delightfully easy work with the new mixer), and then spread and wrapped and tied and spread and wrapped and tied. And then I steamed them in the pressure cooker, which cut 40 minutes off the finishing time. And then I finally tried one, and they were delicious. It might’ve been partly knowing how much work had just gone into them, but standing in the kitchen eating this heavenly warm fragrant corn-sweet tamale straight from the husk was a toe-curling affair.

I made three fillings (and happily the book described three methods for rolling, so I tried them all): black bean, corn with carmelized onion, and adobo. The adobo is far and away my favorite — it’s a paste/sauce/thing made from dried chiles and it’s unholy tasty. It’s not hot at all, just — flavorful. Voluptuous. All rich sweet chile and vinegar and these whispers of cinnamon.

So now I just have to keep out of them until Wednesday, which is family dinner night. I’m doing the Dia de los Muertos thing, and I was going to do pan de muerto, the traditional ‘bread of the dead’, but it calls for an unconscionable amount of eggs. So instead I’m using unconscionable amounts of butter to make Maya’s Day of the Dead Cookies, which are shaped like skulls. And no good pirate can pass up an opportunity to make skull-shaped cookies.