On the Hunt for Tamales

I visited my family in Lambton County this week. I combined the visit with breakfast with some former colleagues from a school I taught at from 1978 to 1989. The ladies meet the first Friday of the month and call the event the ‘Breakfast Club’.

Dolores will turn 92 in a couple of weeks and brought cupcakes to share with us for the festive occasion. I try to time most visits to see my family with the first Friday of the month. It’s so nice to see these ladies and get somewhat caught up on life events.

Afterwards I picked up my niece, Ana, and we headed to the greater Blenheim area to Pastime Pieces.

It is a lovely quilt shop with lots of models on display. Marlene also has a decent, up-to-date inventory of cross-stitch, embroidery, and wool felt appliqué patterns.

I purchased a skein of WDW Grits and a pack of #26 Pony tapestry needles. The needles are black and the top third is painted white. The bi-coloured needles make it a bit easier to find a dropped one as it will show up on both dark and light surfaces. It's always good to have a telescoping magnet, too.

I also bought the Robin Pickens chart, Cardinal’s Winter. I really like the colours.

The model is framed in an interesting way with the mounted piece centred on a green background.

Yesterday evening my two nieces and I enjoyed take-out Indian food for supper and spent the evening together chatting about family lore.

This morning I slept in a bit (called hurkle-durkling, apparently), then headed for home by way of Strathroy and Mexicolombian Market, a little Latin American shop. I wanted to pick up some tamales to take home. I haven’t found a supplier near my place other than a couple of phone numbers I have to call to order them. I make my own corn tortillas from scratch using tortilla flour sold at Metro but making tamales is a much more intricate process. 

These tamales come frozen in packs of 3.

I picked up 2 each of beef and pork. Fortuitously, I had a freezer bag in the car so stuffed them in there with a fleece lap blanket for additional insulation and zipped up the bag. The bonus is that Strathroy is directly on one of the regular routes home from my niece’s place.

The traffic on both the 401 and 407 was very light and the roads were dry - great driving conditions. I had a new audiobook to entertain me. 

I was glad to get home and pop the tamales into the freezer. I’ll enjoy a couple of the pork ones for supper tonight.

A nice surprise awaiting me at home was that one of my orchids finally bloomed.

It’s been in bud for a couple of weeks and I’d been anxiously waiting for it to bloom. It’s a “Piccola” species. The bloom is only about 3cm wide. 

I’ve had very good luck with my orchids as they thrive on neglect. I water this one once a week by sitting the bottom of the inner pot in a bowl of water for 15 minutes once a week - just to moisten the medium with its moss and bark. I have a full-sized one that is also growing a spike with nodules which will become buds in a few weeks. It will be the third or fourth time that one will have bloomed under my care. It only gets watered once every two weeks. Apparently they don’t like to be too wet. I know it’s healthy because it has many, healthy air roots.

And now… time for a nap.

Update... the pork tamale was delicious!