Tamales

That's right, suddenly I can make tamales. Here's the story first.

My co-worker was laid off, and I am stuck running the classroom by myself. We had planned to make tamales for a parent participation day, and I was scrambling to put together the project. I found a recipe online, I asked my boss to pick up the ingredients, and she told me that she already knew how to make them, so she would pick up the ingredients and show me. Then she brought me the ingredients for her tamales (different ingredients than for the recipe I found) and told me that she wished she could come to our fun activity, but she was at a conference for the rest of the week. Thanks alot. So I frantically searched online for a recipe that seemed to use her ingredients, but to no avail. The morning of the Tamale Day came, and I drove to work in a snowstorm, still wondering how to face the great tamale dilemma.

Here are the ingredients I had:
Corn Oil
Chicken Broth
Olives
One whole Chicken (plucked, not cut or de-boned. Emma HELP!!!!)
Masa
Corn Shucks
Chili powder
Can of fajita sauce
assorted spices from the kitchen
Shortening

Here is what I did:
Boiled the chicken in a pot of Fajita sauce and water.
Made the class of four-year olds wash their hands and "pull the yummy bits of chicken off and put them in the blue bowl. Put the yucky pieces in the Black bowl."
Voila. One shredded chicken. And 16 traumatized children.
Save the fajita sauce/boiled chicken juice. Pour it into the bowl of masa.
add some spices, some shortening, some corn oil, and some chicken broth, until it is about the consistency of cookie dough. All things can be likened unto cookie dough.
Soak the corn shucks in water this entire time (about 2 hours), and hand corn shucks out to the kids. Let them smear the masa dough onto the top half of the corn shuck, stick a handful of traumatically shredded chicken in the middle with an olive.
Fold it like a tamale.
Put it in a pan with a steamer in the bottom.
Once the pan is all full, fill the bottom of it with the rest of the broth and some water.
Steam them until they are done. We made about 30, and it took an hour to steam them. One parent said that 5 take abot 20 minutes. If they are taking a long time, you have to make sure that the pan doesn't steam itself dry. Just keep adding water/broth.

Here's the kicker people. They were a hit. The kids LOVED making them (talk about a sensory experience) and they were really good. I ate two. They were tasty. Parents took them home for dinner.

All I'm sayin is, if you ever need a fun (messy) FHE activity, this is it. You can simplify it in obvious places. No need to force your children to de-bone a chicken, just buy boneless skinless chicken. Or ground beef, or pork. Whatever meat works. I probably won't make them on my own, not without small children to enslave. Plus, it makes a lot of food.