It is finally December! We winter folk are now able to wear our hats and sweaters, scarves and gloves and breathe the cold air, sharp and exhilarating. The night starts in the afternoon, leaving us with great excuses to build a fire, cozy up with a cat on the couch or get in the kitchen and bake, bake, bake! Or bundle up and bustle on holiday errands, under a velvety sky punctuated with brighter stars. My favorite season is here.
I know there are plenty of humbuggers out there, grumblers who miss the sun. But without the dark, how can we appreciate the light? The darkness allows magic to flourish more easily. When humans drew together around a fire for safety, warmth, and companionship, folklore and stories naturally blossomed. The Christmas story of Mary and Joseph searching for a place under that extra bright star satisfies a deep love of the light against the darkness. Plus, a baby and a donkey; it does not get much better than that.
So, let us burn the “good” candles that we were saving; now is the time. Here in Watsonville, California, neighborhoods will light up with luminarias for Las Posadas. Las Posadas (the inns, in Spanish) is an outdoor, evening celebration between December 16-24 where folks holding lighted candles re-enact the search Mary and Joseph took to find lodging, luminarias often times lining the walkways up to participating houses. It is a beautiful and festive tradition brought to Mexico from Spain in the 1500s, gradually becoming popular in Texas and the southwest, then on into California.
The community procession, sometimes accompanied by a mariachi band, sings carols along its way to designated houses who are asked if there is lodging for the holy couple and are turned away three times, though each house provides holiday treats like tamales, Mexican hot chocolate, or atole, a sweetened, spiced corn based hot drink. At the fourth house, hosts welcome the party inside for more feasting and a pinata in the shape of a star, symbolizing the Star of Bethlehem.
Moving and satisfying to do, Las Posadas are also beautiful to see happening, in part because the candles and luminarias are lighting up the winter darkness. Even if there is no Las Posadas tradition where you live, luminarias are a festive way to decorate for the season. They are an easy and pretty craft that can be done with paper bags, sand or pebbles, and votive candles, your basic grocery and hardware store craft. Punch holes in your paper bags to make patterns or simply roll down the top. Weigh the bags down with sand and nestle a small candle inside the bag. Lining your walkway or porch, they make a welcoming entrance to any evening party you host, from early December through New Year’s Eve.
Lucky for us, we do have a vibrant Hispanic community, and the built environment is enriched with early Spanish-influenced architecture and adobes, many still in use. The holidays are a wonderful time to get out and see the lights and decorations. In Pacific Grove, Suzi and I decorated our inns for Christmas at the Inns, a popular tour that included several of the Victorian inns in that charming town. In Monterey, the Christmas at the Adobes tour has costumed docents welcoming guests to luminaria-lit adobes in the state historic park, featuring California’s first theatre and adobes associated with early Monterey being California’s first capital. Tickets go quickly for these tours; check soon if you would like to attend.
Above, Christmas at the Adobes, Monterey, 2019, photo by Sheldon Chang courtesy of CA State Parks.
We grew up a thirty-minute school bus ride from Mission San Juan Bautista, one of the few California missions to continually serve as a Catholic church (and not fall into ruin though it sits directly atop the San Andreas Fault.) The small town of San Juan Bautista is lovingly preserved by locals, the state park system caring for historic buildings around the town square.
In California schools, fourth graders get to study the mission system which means an exciting field trip to your nearest mission and getting to construct one of the 21 missions from such diverse materials as cardboard, tongue depressors, Mod Podge, and/or sugar cubes. If I was tasked with it today, I’d likely make my mission out of cake!
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Strolling around the town, you still see one- and two-hundred-year-old live oak and olive trees shading public and private gardens. The gnarly old pepper tree mentioned in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic movie, Vertigo, stands near the historic Zanetta House and stables, all used as filming locations, as well as the mission itself. (Vertigo was also filmed at another California mission in San Francisco, Mission Dolores, the oldest surviving building in town, (1776 in case you needed to know that.)
Strolling around the town, you still see one- and two-hundred-year-old live oak and olive trees shading public and private gardens. The gnarly old pepper tree mentioned in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic movie, Vertigo, stands near the historic Zanetta House and stables, all used as filming locations, as well as the mission itself. (Vertigo was also filmed at another California mission in San Francisco, Mission Dolores, the oldest surviving building in town, (1776 in case you needed to know that.)
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Above, vintage postcards of Mission San Juan Bautista and Mission Dolores, San Francisco.
Above and below, photos of Mission San Juan Bautista, decorated for Christmas, used here by permission of Lynne Rutter, San Francisco-based decorative artist and blogger. Read her whole December 2011 blog,The Ornamentalist, which also has lovely photos of Mission Soledad, decorated for Christmas.
I have long been drawn to the aesthetic of the California mission style, which is a sort of handmade, ad hoc rendition of richer, European gothic churches. The blending of rustic wooden furniture with decorative painting on plastered walls with tile floors, roofs, and accents makes homey and welcoming interiors, if not very comfortable places to hang out. In the 1920s, when Mission Revival style became vogue, coordinating upholstered sofas and leather or cowhide chairs were added, making lounging a bit comfier.
Above, one of the more decorative maps available from The California Missions Alliance Trail Store.
They also have guidebooks and more user-friendly maps as well as related merchandise
They also have guidebooks and more user-friendly maps as well as related merchandise
The California missions trail, with its 21 missions from San Diego to Sonoma, has been more of an idea than a thruway. A coalition of people are working to make the 800-mile walking and biking route an actual path. The California Missions Trail Alliance (CMTA) are working towards a “sustainable heritage trail that captures the present-day enthusiasm for walking and cycling holidays” that will eventually connect all 21 missions. That is a big undertaking, given that some of the missions are quite remote while others are in highly congested and densely populated areas. But wouldn’t it be lovely if it happens?
It put me in mind of the European pilgrimage trail, El Camino de Santiago, where walkers follow the path of Saint James. Aunt Rose has visited the destination of the pilgrimage route, Santiago de Compostela Cathedral, in Galicia, Spain. Compostela comes from the Latin “campus stellae” meaning field of stars, based on the stars of the Milky Way. According to the Middle Age legend in which St. James followed the stars on his own path, the pilgrimage trail grew to follow in his footsteps and reach his tomb.
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Clockwise from above left, a vintage postcard of an El Camino de Santiago route,
the grand exterior of the Cathedral de Santiago de Compostela, and the giant thurible inside the Cathedral, which Aunt Rose saw in action and says is indeed a true wonder to behold.
the grand exterior of the Cathedral de Santiago de Compostela, and the giant thurible inside the Cathedral, which Aunt Rose saw in action and says is indeed a true wonder to behold.
Beginning in England, France, or Spain, the entire trail can take a month or more of walking from inn to inn. Most folks choose segments of the path to walk or bike, fitting with the time they have. My friend Joanne walked with her sister, beginning in France and ending in Barcelona. She noticed that most pilgrims were either in the post-college or post-retirement age groups, which makes sense, as they generally have more time to make the journey.
Begun purely as a religious pilgrimage, El Camino has become many things to many people. Some are making time for introspection or to heal from life’s travails or simply to be in the company of like-minded fellows. Joanne found that about half the folks she encountered on the trail were religious pilgrims and half were walking for other reasons.
Both Rose and Joanne recommended the 2010 Martin Sheen movie, The Way, directed by his son, Emilio Estevez. I have not tracked it down as of this writing, but I put it on the To Watch list. I do not want to ruin the plot for you, but I will say that Martin Sheen’s character begins walking El Camino unexpectedly while dealing with a life crisis and runs into human nature in many of its complicated and humorous aspects, gaining healing along the way.
Getting back to California, the season demands feasting, so Rose and I are bringing New World sweets recipes for your consideration. This month, Rose’s blog, Tea and Travels, brings a trove of chocolate recipes, including a cherished favorite recipe of mine, the Queen of California cake. It is a European-style cake made with California ingredients, the original recipe coming from a California walnut grower’s recipe booklet in the 1980s. Often we switch the walnuts with another major California crop, almonds. Either nut is delightful, playing well with the dried apricots in the recipe. Covered in shiny dark chocolate ganache, this petite cake is served in small wedges for everyone but the most dedicated chocolate lover.
Above, a photo of the Queen of California cake, on a depression glass cake pedestal, in front of my grandfather Patrick Murdock’s tribute to Monet’s waterlilies painting, which he cheekily signed “Patrick Monet.”
Tamales are the food most associated with the holiday season in California which I imagine is true in most Hispanic communities in the United States. We are lucky to have a great tamale “factory” storefront in downtown Watsonville and you can get a good tamale at most Mexican restaurants here, but arguably the best tamales are from the tamale lady or tamale man, sometimes found in the parking lot of the grocery store. I believed I’ve reported previously that my brother has been blessed with a tamale man who comes to his front door: wow!
Our family eats tamales year-round, with Mr. Vazquez making pork in red sauce or the very spicy jalapeño and cheese versions, so we usually have a stash of a few dozen in the freezer. Being a Team Savory guy, he is not interested in sweet tamales, though his mother, Lana, makes delicious little cinnamon and raisin tamales at Christmas.
After watching tamales being made for many years now, I decided I would try my hand at Lana’s sweet tamales this winter. I came up with a lightly sweet masa (the dough of tamales made with corn flour) flavored with cinnamon and piloncillo, a cone of unrefined cane sugar which you grate into sweet desserts and drinks. Along with the raisins, I thought chopped fresh apple might be nice.
However, as I was gathering my ingredients to make the tamales, I ran across a splashy ad for a big new Mexican grocery in Watsonville, Vallarta supermarket.
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Above, the Vallarta supermarket ad and Vallarta’s pineapple masa, here being paired
with cream cheese, toasted pecans, and piloncillo.
with cream cheese, toasted pecans, and piloncillo.
What?! I had never seen fresh masa for sale specifically for sweet tamales, never mind knowing there were so many other varieties of masa. I had seen recipes for colored sweet masa online, but never in real life, as it were, but now they were about a mile from me. I went right down to Vallarta and saw the whole cold case filled with all these bags of different fresh masas, all ready to make into semi-homemade sweet tamales.
When researching sweet tamales online, I found one website with especially instructive, step-by-step photos of tamale making, My Slice of Mexico. I emailed creator Irene Arita for permission to use her recipes but have not heard back. I hope Irene will be happy that I am sharing her recipes and clear photos with you all.
Using my store-bought sweet masa, I made the tamales. There is a mystique surrounding tamale making, and it is a skill to be honed through repetition but there is a lot to be said for just diving right in and seeing what happens. When thinking about people making tamales, I imagine a group of folks sitting at a big table, all industriously spreading masa on softened corn husks, folding them just so, and carefully adding them in an upright position in a huge steamer basket. Mr. V has finally excused me from “helping” make his tamales, finding my masa-spreading technique not up to his rigorous standards. To which I petulantly say, good, I didn’t want to anyway. He insists upon making giant tamales, masa and filling straddling two overlapped corn husks, tied on both ends with string, a method even his mom says is too much work. To be fair, savory tamale making is more technical because the masa must totally encase the saucy filling or the precious sauce will ooze out during steaming. And of course, his tamales are a little bit of heaven to eat and worth all the effort.
I let go of all the tamale lore and rules and just dived in. To go with my flavored masa, I assembled my fillings:
Pineapple bits
Cream cheese “sticks”
Pomegranate seeds
Brandied dried fruit mixture
Piloncillo, grated over top
Toasted pecans
Cream cheese “sticks”
Pomegranate seeds
Brandied dried fruit mixture
Piloncillo, grated over top
Toasted pecans
Above, top row, left to right, pineapple masa with cream cheese, toasted pecans, piloncillo cone, middle photo, strawberry masa, cream cheese, pomegranate, right photo, dried fruit mix, bottom phot, my work space laid out with fillings, masas, corn husks, and steamer basket, ready to be filled.
One of the keys to making good tamales is to apply the masa in an even coat to most of the corn husk. There is a fun video of a guy coating his corn husk using a plaster trowel as if he is putting a “butter coat” on drywall. Butter coating is a skill at which Mr. Vazquez excels, so perhaps that is the secret to his fine masa technique. I, on the other hand, favor more of a slap-dash, good-enough-for-who-it’s-for method, as seen in the photographs above. Skipping ahead, I must report that my sloppy masa work cooked up just fine, my tamales looking remarkably similar to tamales made by someone with finesse.
Above, my sweet pineapple and strawberry tamales plated atop pools of crème anglaise. Pomegranate seeds are sprinkled over the pink tamale while the pineapple tamale is strewn with brandied mixed fruit and date syrup which is subbing here for caramel syrup, stirred dulce de leche, or maple syrup.
I am surprised and happy that the pre-made masa cooked up into such yummy tamales. Homemade is almost always best, but going forward I will probably buy my sweet masa, if it is available. I will most definitely be serving these sweet tamales this holiday season, along with Mexican wedding cakes, also known as Russian tea cakes. These buttery cookie balls rolled in snowy powdered sugar, crunchy with the nuts of your choice, are one of the best of the cookies in the Christmas cookie line up.
If you are thinking of adding Mexican sweets to your holiday festivities, our Calendar of Tea Parties section offers classic Mexican recipes perfect for winter feasts, including pumpkin empanadas, tres leches cake, Mexican hot chocolate, and the Mexican wedding cakes. Find our October menu here: My Tea Planner.
Wishing You a Joyous Holiday Season
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Happiest New Year!
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Happiest New Year!
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