Situation:  My Nana is staying in a rehabilitation facility until she recovers well enough to return home, and that day can’t come soon enough for her

Challenge:  Send a little bit of sunshine her way every day to make it easier for her to deal with the situation

I ruled out flowers because they are expensive to send one time, much less every day.  New plan!  Picked up a bunch of random greeting cards from SCRAP.  Cards are 10 cents each, and envelopes are a nickel each.  However, finding envelopes that are the right size to match the cards is time consuming and frustrating, so I picked up a stack of collage paper at a penny a sheet.  I luckily stumbled on pages from a desconstructed book on Sunflowers, which would really help me send a bit of sunshine her way.  Making envelopes is a cinch.  It took maybe an hour to make enough envelopes to go with all of the cards I bought.

I started signing cards and writing crazy things in them.  One of them I signed from her dog.  One I signed from all of her grandkids and their families.  Another one wished her Happy Administrative Assistant’s Day just for the heck of it.  Lots of them contained cute animals, silly jokes, or pretty flowers. I made address labels on my printer, slapped ‘em on, and added postage.

Four went in the mail the first day.  Anywhere from one to three cards went into the mail each day for a week.  Some were sent from home, and others dropped into the mailbox near work.  Then I waited.

She thanked me for the first day of cards with, “Do you believe I got 4 cards from you in one day?”

Every day I spoke with her after that she seemed tickled to be getting mail, and apparently her nurses are teasing her about being so popular.  When I spoke with her this morning, she said, “I have gotten nine cards from you so far!  I have run out of room for them on the windowsill, and I think they will need to go on the bulletin board next. They make me smile.”

Achievement unlocked!!!!

I didn’t tell her that I picked up another batch of cards, envelopes, and collage paper after my shift at SCRAP yesterday, so more are coming!  My objective is to have a ready stash of sealed cards that I can trickle into the mail every day.  As she starts to get better and is ready to go home, I will just change the address on the cards so she will continue to get them.  With a couple hours prep work and minimal out of pocket cost, her mailbox will be overwhelmed but she’ll know I am thinking about her.

Ingredients:
1 pound of Meyer lemons, quartered
Several Clementine tangerines
A lemon or two lurking in my fridge
2 cinnamon sticks
Cup or so of white sugar
A bit of cardamom seed
A bit of whole cloves
About a quarter cup of sliced fresh ginger
Cider vinegar
Cheap vodka (more on this later)

In a big bowl, I mashed up the fruit and ginger into a big mushy mess before adding the sugar and spices for maceration. I covered the bowl and left it in the fridge.  After a few hours, I was very impatient and drained the syrup out of the bowl into the largest measuring cup I own.  (4 cups)  The syrup came out to about 2 cups, so I matched that with an equal amount of cider vinegar and whisked them together.  Side note:  the syrup on its own was completely freaking delicious, and would make a terrific base for cooking or beverages.  I funneled the mixture into a bottle with a lightning-type closure, and back it went into the fridge.

After finishing the vinegar, I really didn’t want the fruit rinds and spices to go to waste.  Solution?  Pour a bottle of cheap vodka over the whole mixture, put it in an air tight container, and leave it in a dark place for a while.  I am shaking it up from time to time, and hope the citrus mellows the vodka to a point where it will be nice in cocktails. I doubt it will ever mellow it to the point where the vodka could be enjoyed straight.

I sampled the sipping vinegar later in the week, and it is delicious! The next time I make this I will try to be a bit more patient and let the flavors of the spices seep into the syrup more.

Picked this up in August and only now got around to altering it.

Nifty trick for the gathered sides — used the discarded hems from another t-shirt project as the casing.  Used my serger for all of the main work.  Did a number of basting tries with the sewing machine before I finally said f*** it and took the plunge.

2 days!  Day 1 involved soaking the husks, cooking the pork, prepping the chiles, cooking the chiles, then milling the chilies into a very fine paste.  Day 2 was mixing the masa to the perfect consistency (does it float?), then assembling all of the tamales.  Those corn husks are tricky!

There were a couple of times where I asked Aaron for advice since it is his family’s recipe.  At this point he admitted that the men usually get kicked out of the kitchen during the tamale making process so he didn’t know a lot about the finer points of preparation. I called my MIL and she answered a lot of my questions.  Since it takes a long time to assemble them, per my MIL’s suggestion I put them in the freezer in batches to keep them well shaped until I had enough to steam.  She also recommended steaming them the same day I make them so they are easier to re-heat.

Halfway through the assembly process I ran out of masa, and my friend ran out to the mercado to pick up more.  I started with pre-mixed masa then added broth and lard until the consistency was right.  Once we ran out of meat and chile filling, there was a lot of masa left over!  I made an impromptu batch of sweet tamales with chocolate chips and dried cherries.  I used butter instead of the lard when combining with the pre-mixed masa, and added sugar, vanilla, and LOTS of cinnamon.

I don’t have a traditional tamale steaming pot (and they were $70 at the mercado!) so I used my canning pot and an inverted vegetable steamer.  Worked like a charm!

At the end of the day my freezer is overflowing is tamales and Aaron insists that they taste just like his family would make. Huzzah!