Christmas in October

By Marnie Thornton

Today Mindy and I had the privilege of making "hallacas" with our family. This is a traditional holiday dish that Venezuelans make on Christmas Eve. It is like a tamale filled with ground meat and spices, chopped olives, flour and raisins in a corn-meal dough, all wrapped up in a banana leaf. Here's how we did it, assembly-line fashion: One person put a circle of oil on the banana leaf along with the corn-meal layer. Then Mindy put in the meat mixture. I added raisins and green olives. They all had to be placed perfectly on top of the leaf or our host "mom" would rearrange them. Then I would pass it on to our "mom" and she would fold the leaf in a way that would keep the hallaca dry. The last step was taking string and wrapping it all around the leaf packages. We made 36 of them and then set them outside to boil in water for three hours. It was a really neat experience and we got to eat one for dinner.