TAMALE NIGHT!!!! (By FOOD & WINE: Entertaining)

I love FOOD & WINE Magazine! They read my mind and provide me with recipes and ideas I have been thinking about as we change the seasons.  As we entered into the holiday months (by the way I CANNOT believe it is already NOVEMBER!) I wanted to try making tamales!

While reading the October Food & Wine Magazine, I stumbled upon tamale recipes and a guide on how to throw a Tamale Making Party! Sounds like my kind of party... So we put it on the calendar.  The Sunday before we prepped the chicken, salsa, and masa dough, and then all we had to do was assemble and steam!

Here are the recipes from FOOD & WINE Magazine (I subscribe via nook, and on my iPad take screen shots to save my favorite articles):

 And to guide us in assembling the tamales, I zoomed in on the instructions to Assemble & Steam the Tamales and displayed with my iPad connection cord on our TV... I know I am a nerd!

While they were steaming we enjoyed wine and appetizers while we chatted... and ummm browsed Facebook, wedding pictures, and wedding videos together on my iPad displayed on our new 55in TV!  

Homemade Vanilla Extract

December 2010 Food & Wine magazine arrived in late November and when I was reading it, I found this awesome gift idea for my girl friends.  Well Christmas 2010 came and went and I had nothing.  In 2011, I wasn't going to let this happen!

So at the beginning of November I ordered the bottles from the container store. Then bought a large bottle of vodka.  Then in late November I finally found vanilla beans.  I bought mine at Whole Foods and they were 5 bucks a piece, but when we were recently at a brew shop (the one we visited in this post), I found 8 vanilla beans for $8.  Wow, did I over pay!  Well I have no idea the difference in quality, but I think it is worth a try to save $4 a bean!

Then time to assemble.  I took the bean, cut it in half (lengthwise), because I was on a budget. Placed the bean in the bottle, then filled the bottle to the top with vodka, put the cork in, and placed them in a cool dark place for 6 weeks. I tied a festive gift tag to the bottle.  I've already tried mine and it is fabulous, even better than store bought!