You will thank me come Christmas time.

The other day I was at Rio Ranch Market. It is like me new favorite store these days. While looking for a garlic press I can across (stop laughing Joey) this...

I immediatley sent a picture to my Mom saying "I just cut your tamale making time in half!" She responded with "Buy me two of them. Serious".

So I did. My Mom and Pops make tamales at home AND my Mom and her sisters make all the tamales for the family Christmas Eve celebration. They have always used the complicated and time consuming traditional practice of using the back of a spoon. (Really I don't know how tough this is to master. I can remember spreading masa on husks with a spoon as a kid!)

So this contraption is suppose to make the task of spreading masa a breeze. But really I can't sell this better than this video can.

So let me warn you before hand about this video. This is Sandra Vasquez and she invented this amazing product. BUT she says the word masa in the most annoying way possible. And she says it 50 times in this video. I know. I counted. (Plus I kept thinking about Mario Lopez and how he did not like his baby-momma's first name so he calls her by her last name, Mazza. But since he is all super-Latino when he says it, it sounds like masa.)




Was it just me or was Sandra really turning quite bitchy towards the end there. It was almost like she was totally annoyed with me and was fed up with having to demonstrate over and over again.

Anyways she claims to have made 5 dozen in about 7 minutes. Now lets do some math. At my Nana's house they make about 40 dozen tamales in one day. So by my calculations it should take them 56 minutes to spread masa on 40 dozen tamales. But WAIT! I bought 2 spreaders so really it should only take 28 minutes!!! Less than half an hour people!! To spread masa on 480 husks. With that barbaric spoon this would have taken all day!

So here is what my Tia's should do. If they each get a spreader they can have 40 dozen tamales done in about an hour. Filling and folding included! So with all that extra time they should book a spa day. After so many years of hard spoon spreading tamale making they deserve some pampering.