halloween tamales

Yesterday I took my maiden voyage into tamal-making for our Halloween dinner party using Rick Bayless's recipes for Basic Tamal Dough and Chicken in Green Chile Filling.

At first I was a bit squeamish about using lard in the tamal dough, but I got over it. I figured if I was going to spend a whole day making these, I should do exactly what Rick tells me because he is the master (we went to Chicago last weekend and had dinner at Xoco, the newest jewel in his restaurant empire—it was fantastic. More on that trip later). And science to the rescue: a bit of research uncovered that lard has less saturated fat (bad) and more monounsaturated fat (good) than butter, plus zero trans fat unlike vegetable shortening. (I found this data by doing a basic search on the USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference; also, interesting article on the lard renaissance here.) You'll want the fresh, tan-colored stuff (not the white, shelf-stable, hydrogenated kind), which I've usually seen sold in quart- or gallon-sized buckets at Latino markets.

Being a novice at making tamales, I was worried that these would be a huge fail, but they weren't too difficult to assemble and turned out amazingly light, fluffy, and flavorful. I think the trickiest part was spreading the tamal dough onto the corn husk, and I found it easiest and fastest to use a silicone spatula for that step. The hardest part was not having enough counter space to spread everything out—I think I'll have to make these (or a variation using banana leaves) again in my parents' kitchen during the holidays.

Oh, and the strands of white on the black beans in the photo is melted Oaxaca cheese—a grand discovery at our local supermercado. I was on the phone with TJ while he was doing the grocery shopping and all of a sudden he stopped and said, WHOA. For a second I was worried that something was wrong but actually he had just laid his eyes on the cheese. A very large ball of fresh Oaxaca cheese. I think it's a new item (which they'll hopefully keep in stock) since we're always on the lookout for it and hadn't seen it there before.

on perma-xmas, tea towels, and apple

Thank you for all of your nice comments on the office and for offering help on my Airport Express networking issues. Unfortunately, the problem has been languishing—I haven't had the chance to go back to it since my last post, but I'll shoot one or all of you an e-mail soon.

By the way, the office color scheme being perma-Christmas did cross my mind, but I think the greens being more limey than piney helps modernize it and makes it less overtly yuletide. What happened is that my existing storage boxes and media console already happened to be red, and I had other boxes that were green, so it all kind of fell into place and I decided that I might as well go all the way with it.

To continue with the theme, I'm thinking of getting one of these tea towels to frame and put on the wall.

 Or maybe of these:
Or this one. Just wish the green was chartreuse.

Speaking of apples, I can't wait for the "Back to the Mac" event on Wednesday. I've tired of all this iOS talk of late,, so it's exciting that Apple is finally going back to its roots. I could really really use a new laptop, so I'm crossing my fingers for a MacBook Pro update . . .

All of the tea towels, by the way, come from the brilliantly-named ToDryFor.com. I had a hard time choosing from all of the fun designs they have available.

the corner office

One thing I really like about living in Kentucky is that you get a lot of rental bang for your buck. We're really enjoying the new apartment we moved into in August—it's definitely the nicest place we've lived since getting married. The let's-move-to-a-new-apartment-every-year game can get pretty tiring, so I'm happy that we have this place to call home for at least the next three years.

And I finally get a functional office/craft room! So nice to have a space set aside for telecommuting and sewing. I wasn't planning on posting any pictures this soon because everything is still a work in progress (e.g., cord management problems and the other side of this room is a mess), but I can't hold back my excitement about these chartreuse chevron curtains:

I made the curtains using a simple tutorial for tab-top curtains from The Purl Bee. I omitted the tabs from my version and hung up the curtains using curtain rings. Didn't want to deal with a ton of yardage, so I got just enough fabric to hit the bottom of the window's apron. The medium-weight chartreuse chevron fabric, as well as the insulated white lining, are both from fabric.com—a great deal at about $7 and $4 per yard respectively, and free shipping to boot. Not too shabby, eh?

What's next for this room: put away the rest of the mess, finish and hang a wall quilt, find some under desk storage (I like these red filing cabinets from cb2), and get the Airport Express wireless printer setup up and running. I haven't been able to get it to work since we left Santa Barbara—I've reset it and fiddled around with a bunch of settings, but the last time I tried to connect it the home network slowed to a crawl and it took about an hour to print a page. I guess I'm not the most network-savvy person out there, so if anyone knows what the problem could be (cough JohnE) let me know.