For my Making Tamales posts, I wanted to keep them pretty descriptive because I wanted to save the reflecting for this post. Now, however, I wanted to share my feelings after trying my first homemade tamal. I was blown away after biting into my first tamal because I was...

Welcome Back! It is now time to assemble the tamales! After watching a couple videos and reading through Isabel’s directions, I thought I had a grasp on what I needed to do in order to assemble the tamales. First, I grabbed a corn husk, spread some masa on it,...

Ah, it’s that time! Time to make tamales! I had originally planned to try multiple recipes, but I only have time to try one recipe for this project. I chose a recipe from Isabel Eats, a first generation Mexican-American chef. Note: since I was just making tamales for my...

Next on my list was Juannita’s, which I was excited to try since this was my first time going to Juannita’s. I grew up in Bloomington and Juannita’s has been around for most of my life, but I have never been to Juannita’s, which is surprising considering that Mexican...

I decided to try my first tamal at La Poblana, a food truck serving Mexican Puebla cuisine. La Poblana is located on 3rd street by Bear’s Place and is very conveniently located for IU students and faculty to grab lunch. It has been one of my go-to lunch places...

Tamal-making and tamaladas bring families together and connect families through tradition and history. Themes of family, tradition, and belonging have come up time and time again during our studies of Latina/o/x cultures. A perfect example of how the influence of tamal-making connects to themes of family and belonging is...

La tamalada is a tamale making party, where families gather together to reconnect, share stories, and make delicious tamales. A tamalada is a casual, yet organized event with each family member working on some part of the tamal-making process, like it is an assembly line. Tamaladas are a historical...

Corn, or maize, has always been central to the Mexican diet and Mexican cuisine. Not just Mexico, but throughout Mesoamerica, corn was vital and valued in their cuisine. Stories about the creation of the human race in ancient Maya depicted how the gods decided what the human race should...

Hello! My name is Ceilidh Christie and I am taking LATS-L103, or Introduction to Latino Cultures at IU Bloomington this semester. For the final project of the course, I planned to study and explore Mexican tamales because my initial interest in Latino/a/x cultures stems from my love of Mexican...