Tuesday, December 6, 2011

The Tamale Experiment


Sunday morning on our walk, we heard a familiar cry -- ta-ma-leeees -- ta-ma-leeees.  I'd been wanting to try a tamale ever since we arrived this trip, so curiosity got the best of me.  The guy had stopped his trike to sell to another man, so we rushed over to investigate.

He spoke no English, we speak very little Spanish, so we indicated dos and he told us veinte.  And I stepped in with the camera for the photo.


Shortly after we walked down the street, it hit me that I wasn't really going to try those tamales.  I'm a street food chicken and not willing to risk my intestines for a taste from the cart, especially since I had no clue about the man's culinary reputation.  I justified my 20 pesos as a donation for the photo, and decided to let Craig be the guinea pig.



In the whole vein of  Give it to Mikey -- He'll eat anything (remember those cereal commercials?), Craig gave it a whirl.  After two bites he proclaimed it to be fairly disgusting.  We think the tamales were of the boiled variety. 

24 hours later, Craig showed no signs of intestinal distress, so there were no victims from our little escapade.

The whole saga reminds me of the Science Fair when my son was in fourth grade.  While most kids presented mom and dad experiments, two children from Michael's class fed junk food to the family cat for two weeks and charted the cat's physical symptoms.

Thankfully, Tom survived.  (And so did Craig.)





3 comments:

Jana said...

I love how you amuse yourself. LOL!!

IslaZina said...

They are steamed and I don't eat them often, but I buy his fried tomato salsa sometimes to make chiliguiles. He also has corn dough, banana leaves, atole, and whatever his wife or neighbors send with him.

Life's a Beach! said...

Jana, Craig had drug me down the cliff to seaglass hunt despite the fact that the tide was way too high. It was simply a case of getting even! LOL!

Zina, good to know.