Category Archives: Food

Salsa Señorita, the Tamale Task Force and the HICA Tapes.

Carlos Aleman, Lori Sours, Clementine Tufts and myself at the HICA tamale sale video filming this month.

Sounds like Hispanic intrigue, doesn’t it? But it’s really a new way for the Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama – better known as HICA – to get the word out about their annual tamale sale!

Some of the many varieties of Salsa Señorita Salsa!

Since our tamale sale took a little “siesta” last year we decided to create a Tamale Task Force of staff and board members to really amp things up this year! I love it when creativity starts to flow and everyone throws out any and ALL ideas, no matter how crazy they may seem. We narrowed down our list and decided to make a few YouTube videos. We invited Lori Sours, co-creator of Salsa Señorita, to join us and make and share some of her tasty recipes using her delicious salsa. Two years ago, Lori was gracious enough to partner with us on our 2013 tamale sale. During tamale pick up day, we used to get questions like “do you have any salsa for sale to go with the tamales?” – and so that year we had salsa on site for sale thanks to Lori!

UAB Film Making Graduate – Jessica Chriesman – works the angles during the tamale sale videos. This one features Lori Sours, co-creator of Salsa Senorita and Ernesto Martinez of Hacienda Grill.

We worked with UAB Film-making graduate, Jessica Chriesman, to create the videos and had a blast in the process. Lori came ready with recipes for four segments. Who knew you could make so many delicious dishes with salsa? The first was a beer cocktail also called a michelada. Seriously, there was salsa in that beer drink! Lori also made a salsa slaw, guacamole with salsa and finally a salsa cheese dip! Ernesto Martinez of Hacienda Mexican Grill did the michelada segment – lucky guy! I got the slaw segment and not only did Lori add salsa to the slaw…she also added honey! OMGEEE! It was SO DELISH! Never would have thought of that combination in a million years!

Carlos Aleman studies his lines as Lori Sours sets up for their guacamole segment of the HICA tamale sale videos.

Carlos Aleman, History Professor at Samford University, got the guacamole segment. I was a little jealous because I absolutely LOVE guacamole. There was plenty though and we all dug into guac with chips between segments. Maricela Garcia rounded things out with the cheese dip segment. Before each segment began, we would run though lines and during Carlos’ and Lori’s segment, they got tickled about something and kept breaking out into laugher! You know how it is…no matter how hard you try, you just keep breaking out into laughter? That went on for a little while until we were all laughing. I think we may have a great “out-takes’ video in the making! Jessica was definitely patient with us all as we goofed up, goofed around and well…acted goofy! (Thanks Jessica!)

Of course in addition to promoting Salsa Señorita and the recipes, we also had tamales on hand with information on how to order beginning Thanksgiving through December 11th. We had pork, chicken and my favorite – cheese and pepper tamales in these videos. I had not eaten much that day so I devoured whatever I could!

Photo opp with Lori after our salsa slaw segment.

Spending the afternoon with Lori was the best. She is so down to earth and really loves what she does. A native of Las Cruces, New Mexico, she and her brother, Mark Coffman, created a salsa company based on their mother’s recipe. They use all natural ingredients and as she describes – “it’s vegetables in a jar with a kick!” Growing up she said her family put salsa on everything. I told her I could relate with my own New Mexican family! We got into an animated conversation about Hatch chile peppers and she told me she keeps a freezer full at her house. I showed her a picture of my cousin Nino, in Alaska, getting ready to roast a huge batch of peppers and she said she could relate!

The videos will be ready soon. I’ll provide the links so you can get a sense of the fun we had filming that day as well as the great salsa recipes. And remember, if you are in the Birmingham area and want some great tamales, you can buy them through HICA’s website beginning Thanksgiving day through December 11th! And guess what…we’ll be selling Salsa Senorita too! Be sure to buy a jar or two on pick up day. A portion of the proceeds will go to HICA!

Muchas gracias, Salsa Señorita! And HUGE shout out to HICA staff members, Clementine Tufts and Holly Hilton for handling all the arrangements and logistics of the day!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Tales of HICA Tamale Sales, Partnerships and Missing Fingerprints

Leave a reply

This is a promo photo I took before HICA Exec Director Isabel Rubio and I appeared on Fox 6 News in Birmingham to talk about the tamale sale.

To pick up from my last post and how the HICA tamale sale got started…here are a few memories and stories from the early years.

As the HICA tamale sale began to grow, the search for community partners began. We needed kitchen space where we could make more tamales since we had outgrown the kitchen at Grace Episcopal Church. Word was out about tamales so demand began to grow! In 2005, HICA partnered with The Culinard and we were able to use their facilities to make tamales. We had a successful year despite scorching a rather large pot of pepper tamales! That just about broke my heart because I LOVE pepper tamales!!!

The next year – 2006 – we got really aggressive with our media. I got a call from the Birmingham News one day asking if a reporter could come by my house and watch me make tamales. It was a great opportunity to get the word out about the sale so of course, I said yes! I immediately called my mom and we pulled together all the ingredients and got everything ready. Now when you make tamales, you usually make a “ton” because they are so labor intensive. In fact, in many families tamales are made in an assembly line fashion – as many as 60 dozen at a time! So mom and I got to work to get things in order for the demonstration.

This is a print of one of the articles that appeared in the Birmingham News about the tamale sale. The picture is of me in my kitchen loading tamales my mom and I made into my tamale pot to cook. Photo was taken by Bev Taylor of The Birmingham News. My husband framed this article for me as a Christmas present and it hangs in my kitchen.

Kellie Hewitt-Taylor of The Birmingham News was supposed to come to my house to interview me and take photos. Instead she interviewed me over the phone due to a family emergency and sent photographer Bev Taylor to come by and take pictures. Kellie said the story would run in the Wednesday Hoover Neighborhood section of the news. Isabel Rubio, HICA’s executive director, and I were excited about getting this exposure figuring it would help boost sales a bit from the previous year. Well, be careful what you wish for…

I picked up the Wednesday paper and found a small black and white photo of myself filling my tamale pot with tamales on page 2 or 3. I thought – “this is nice! I’m sure this will help sales…” When I got to work, a co-worker called and said, “Hey! I saw your picture in the newspaper today!” I knew she didn’t live in Hoover so I was a little puzzled as she went on and on about the great color photo of me. I was thinking – wait…the picture was in black and white! Now I was REALLY confused!

Turns out the story now only hit the Hoover neighborhood section that day, it hit ALL of the neighborhood section in Birmingham! WHOA! Our sales that year jumped to over 6K and we weren’t prepared for that. But it gave us an opportunity to partner with some local Mexican restaurants to help fill the gaps in addition to what our volunteers were making.

Freddy Rubio works the tamale numbers on tamale pick up day to make sure HICA stays up to speed with the orders and the restaurants partnering with us to provide tamales.

For tamale pick up day that year I just remember the tamales coming into the HICA office in a steady stream. All of us there volunteering that day spent a lot of time wrapping these piping hot tamales with Saran wrap and foil and labeling them by type. I swear to you…I think my fingerprints burned off that day! At the end of that day we were exhausted but thrilled at the success of the sale. I know I was SO ready for a margarita!!! Surprisingly, I also wanted a tamale!

Pork tamales wait their turn to get saran wrapped and foil wrapped for pick up.

The HICA tamale sale PRE-SALE has been extended until August 31st. So, if you are in the Birmingham area, you can place your order online until that date. Place your order today and when you come to HICA to pick up your order on December 18, let me know if you read about the tamale sale on my blog!

Orders wait to be picked up. This is also a great time for HICA to tell their story to the community so we provide our latest newsletter and brochures of information about programs the tamale sale supports.

A volunteer helps wrap the piping hot tamales with saran wrap – these are tamales that have come straight from one of the partner restaurants. The aroma that day of delivery was heavenly to say the least!!!

This was also the first year HICA rented freezers to store tamales for pick up day. In this picture, volunteers load the freezers with freshly wrapped tamales awaiting pick up.

Tamales…Deliciousness in a Corn Husk!

1 Reply

Tamales…so much deliciousness in a corn husk! (NOTE: You don’t eat the corn husk!)

These little tasty meals have become synonymous with a local nonprofit I’ve been involved with for over 10 years by the name of HICA…as in “OH! You’re on the HICA Board?! I love your tamales sale!”

HICA’s tamale sale is back this year after a little “siesta” last year. If you live in the Birmingham, Alabama area, you can pre-order right now until August 1st through the HICA website. After that, the next window to order will be November 22 through December 11 through the website. You can choose from three types of tamales: pork with red sauce, chicken with green sauce and (my favorite!) pepper & cheese tamales. The cost is $30 per dozen or $18 for 1/2 a dozen. (Remember…this is a fundraiser!) Tamale pick up will be at the HICA office on December 18th.

Not having the tamale sale last year was a big decision for the board and fund development committee. HICA had just purchased a building – a new home – in Homewood, AL, and there was so much happening to get the building settled and also pulling together our 15th anniversary event – or quinceañera – with the Birmingham Barons last June. We just didn’t see how we could pull it off successfully with so much going on so, after much discussion we decided to cancel the sale in October and notified our tamale supporters of this decision. We know people were disappointed but they understood and we promised to bring the sale back this year. Personally, I’m so glad it’s back because pulling this fundraiser together is a true labor of love for those of us who’ve been involved over the years and have seen it grow.

HICA Volunteers making tamales one year in partnership with the Culinard.

HICA started the tamale sale 13 years ago around the Christmas holiday time as a fundraiser for the organization. That very first year, supporters, board members and Hispanic community members got together in a volunteer’s kitchen and made hundreds of tamales into the wee hours of the morning to sell to the community at large.

The idea was to bring a little bit of Mexican culture and food to Birmingham. In addition, tamales are a tradition around Christmas time to Mexican families. Many people who have been exposed to the HICA tamale sale over the years have embraced tamales as their own tradition now too!

I have so many stories to tell about the tamale sale which I will do throughout this year leading up to the tamale pick up date on December 18. I’ll also share a few tamale recipes along the way. But for now, you have 8 days to pre-purchase your tamales! Go ahead…you know you want to!

HICA has been grateful to the Piggy Wiggly in Homewood for many years for supplying grocery bags to contain the tamale orders.

Here are a few fun facts about tamales from the HICA Website in case you need a little more encouragement to try them:

Tamales date back to the time of the Aztecs
Tamales can be sweet with fillings such as cinnamon and raisin or fruit.
There are around 1,000 types of tamales available all around Mexico. Every region has its own variety of tamales.
In Mexico, tamales are often eaten during festivities, such as La Candelaria Day (Feb 2), Mexican Independence Day, Day of the Dead, Las Posadas and Christmas.
A Mexican tamale called the Zacahuil is three feet long and weighs about 150 pounds.
Tamales are not only part of Mexican culture, they are also part of Latin American culture.

Mexican Wedding Cookies – My Favorite Christmas Cookie!

Did Somebody Say SALSA?!!

1 Reply

Chances are, if you’ve been to any Zuniga-Odom gatherings over the past fifteen years, you’ve sampled my mother’s famous salsa. And chances are, you’ve left that gathering wanting the recipe! It never fails to leave an impression and now when my friends and extended family see my mom at one of my parties, they KNOW there will be salsa! What can I say…it’s delicious and addicting too!

I went over to my mother’s house the Tuesday before Thanksgiving to watch her make her famous salsa. She was ready to get started as soon as I walked in the door. In fact, she had been cooking all day and even sent me home with Puerto Rican chicken and rice a few hours later. Our Odom family Thanksgiving dinner is on Thursday, and as I said, if mom is there – so is her salsa!

Mom had been to Mi Pueblo Supermarket in Pelham earlier in the day to pick up her salsa ingredients. The most prominent items were the 20 or so Roma tomatoes she had all washed and cleaned in a silver colander. She immediately began cutting them up and chopping them into small pieces.

As she chopped, I asked her about the recipe and where it came from. She reminded me about a time about 15 years ago when we went to dinner at the home of a young woman I had met a work who was of Mexican decent. Her mother lived with her and she had cooked up a huge spread of wonderful Mexican food for all the guests. Mom reminded me that she watched the mother make salsa that day and how delicious it was and how she wanted to recreate the recipe for our family. After the evening with our friends, she came home and talked to my dad about the salsa and ingredients. She said to me, “After we got married, your dad taught me how to cook, PERIOD!” (My mind flashed back to our Christmas eve enchiladas…but I’ll leave that for another blog post.) So, naturally she wanted to run the ingredients by him and get his stamp of approval. Then, she went on to add her own personal touches and “Barb Zuniga’s Salsa” was born!

After chopping up all the tomatoes, mom chopped up 2 medium-sized sweet Vidalia onions and added them to the tomato mix. Next, she chopped up about 1-1/2 bunches of cilantro and mixed it in – oh my…that stuff smells soooo good!

She then opened 1 can of Hatch Chopped green chiles mild (4 oz. can) and 1 (3.3 oz.) can of La Costeña Green Chiles – diced, and added them to the bowl stirring everything together.

Next she started adding a pinch of this and a dash of that…and that when I said to her “you’re cooking the old-fashioned way! I need some more specifics here!” She slowed down and said, “yes, I guess you could say you need to add about 1/4 teaspoon of salt (as she sprinkled salt over the mixture from the container) and about 1 teaspoon of garlic. Next she squeezed about 1 tablespoon of lemon juice over the mix. And finally, about a tablespoon and a 1/2 of sugar “to give it the right flavor!”

As I took pictures of the proceedings, I couldn’t wait to grab a tortilla chip and sample the salsa. We both did and it tasted perfect to me. Mom wasn’t convinced and said “needs a little more salt” and proceeded to sprinkle a bit more salt into the bowl. She said “you gotta have that kick but also a little sweet taste!” We sampled again…more perfection and deliciousness…

She quickly filled 2-1/2 Ball Mason jars with the salsa. Once we open these jars on Thanksgiving day, the flavors will have blended together so well that I don’t think we’ll be able to keep the family away from the salsa and chip bowl!

There are many salsa recipes out there but I have to say…my mom’s recipe is my favorite!