Empty Tamales

Last week at work one of the young ladies took orders for fresh tamales made by her mother for $1 apiece. I asked if they could be made without meat; sure! So I actually ordered ten, as I'm crazy for tamales but commercial ones all seem to have meat, and I certainly don't know how to make them.

Came Friday, and by pure luck or the grace of God I'd brought a ten dollar bill with me, because I'd completely forgotten the day of the tamales. So in comes Lia with the steaming, warm bag of fresh tamales, and I'm thinking, "Oh, boy!"

At lunch I get out the first tamale and open up the corn husk wrapping. Corn meal, delicious, warm, and wrapped around . . . nothing. No beans, no sauce, no vegetables, zippo. I guess she figured that if no meat, I didn't want anything in them.

I was telling the other nurses about this later in the day, and we started to wonder about Lia's mom, making ten empty tortillas, one after the other, and imagined what she must have been thinking. "What kind of a moron wants ten empty tortillas? Oh, well, these vegetarians . . . eight, nine, ten . . ." We laughed so hard I almost peed my pants.