Tamales mix tradition with fun

YAKIMA, WASH. -- Esther Raab doesn't want the younger ones to lose touch with their roots.

So, as they knead masa with their bare hands in large, stainless steel mixing bowls, she tells them, "Really get in there, girls."

She wants them to continue a tradition that was carried across a border and passed from one generation to another, a tradition that ties them to the land of their ancestors, brings them back together -- again and again, year after year -- and warms their bellies.

"Eating them. That's the best part," says 48-year-old Michelle Murillo-Renn,who traveled from Seattle to be here over the weekend.

"If you say we're making tamales everybody comes," Raab, her mother, says. "We have a very large family. And we want this tradition to live on. We want the girls, the young girls, to learn."

The ritual of making tamales -- steaming corn dumplings wrapped in corn husks -- brings her family from across the state home to Yakima every November.

"It's a holiday thing," Raab says. "We like them for Thanksgiving and Christmas."

It takes many hands -- belonging to more than a dozen relatives, ranging in age from 12 to 75 -- to mix the masa, tenderly fill and fold the husks, then steam them to perfection for eating now or freezing for later.

"They're not an easy thing to make," says 71-year-old Dolly Stalder of Yakima, Raab's cousin. "They're a treat when you get them."

The tradition of tamales reaches to ancient Mexico and Central America. Today, the masa and filling recipes vary from region to region.

"We do the pork," Raab says. "Some of the young children, they like the cheese. We'll do a couple dozen of those."

This is their heritage. And Raab, the family matriarch, the eldest of the 11 children of the late Michael and Mary Macias, wants them to know it. She also wants them to taste it. And she wants it to be right. There's no cutting corners under her watchful eyes.

"This is not right, kids," the 75-year-old says, holding up a husk that's not completely covered with masa on one side. "It has to come clear down to the end."

Raab oversees the assembly line. The work is labor-intensive and time-consuming; everything's done by hand, the traditional way. The husks have to be rinsed, then soaked in warm water to make them pliable. The masa -- ground corn mixed with broth, lard, salt, chili powder and baking powder -- must be thoroughly blended. There's 35 pounds of it.

And there's 60 pounds of pork, seasoned with cumin, garlic, salt and pepper. The members of the extended Macias family will make "better than 100 dozen" tamales at a time, according to Raab.

Her father came from Michoacán; her mother, Jalisco. Raab and her siblings were born here. So were their children and their children's children.

"They all come home to make tamales," Raab says. "Our grandmother did it and taught my mother, and my mother taught me, and now I'm teaching the next generation."

Her kitchen isn't big enough to fit the family. So on Saturday, they borrowed the kitchen at Spirit Alive Wesleyan Church in Terrace Heights, crowding around the countertop in the middle of the room, mixing and rolling, filling and folding.

"It just brings a lot of memories of when our aunts and our mothers did it," says 60-year-old Jeannie Sanchez, Raab's sister. "The taste, the smell, it's just memories."

While they remember, they also create -- new memories as well as tamales.

"I just think it's really fun. We do it practically every year, and it's really rewarding," says Raab's granddaughter, 15-year-old Sienna Gray of Goldendale. "It means more time with my elders. I enjoy the time spent with them."

And in the end -- after the mixing bowls and countertops are clean and the last husk is filled and folded -- everyone digs in. They get to sample their work and save some, too.

Says Raab, "You wouldn't dare send them home without tamales."