Today was sunny and warm. This morning we headed to Indio, a community on the east side of Palm Springs to attend the International Tamale Festival. It took place on a two square block area of closed streets in downtown Indio. And notable was the great organization of the festival. Parking was at the local courthouse / justice centre. Every few minutes there was a shuttle bus from the huge parking lot to the festival site. Upon entry to the site there was a well staffed information booth, and staff all around handing out maps of the festival site. Washrooms and garbage containers were in abundance. Well done !
The festival was comprised of hundreds of vendor booths, most of them tamale vendors. By the time we had walked around the circumference of the site, a distance of about four large city blocks, and had tasted a lot of tamale samples, it hardly seemed necessary to have lunch. Nevertheless we bought a couple of tamales for lunch, and sat down at one of the three free stage / beer garden areas to eat them while listening to a mariachi band performing Mexican folkloric music. MMMMM … I had never had a salmon tamale before. And before today we had never tasted dessert tamales, where the masa ( cornmeal ) filling was fruit flavoured ; pineapple, mango, strawberry. We were too full after eating our traditional tamales for lunch to have a dessert tamale, although we had sampled them while walking around. Before leaving the festival we purchased a dozen tamales to put in our freezer from the vendor that we considered the best. Molly’s Tamales was the only vendor using neither lard nor shortening in her tamales. We bought a half dozen chicken and cheese tamales and a half dozen chicken and spinach tamales. We wandered around a bit more, and indulged in a serving of "ribbon fries", a method of preparing “fries” we had not experienced before. The potato was run through a machine that sliced it extremely thin, producing a very long curled “ribbon” of potato before it was deep fried. It was almost like one great big, continuous potato chip. Before catching the shuttle bus back to the parking lot we ( rolling eyes ) browsed in the thrift shop across the street from the shuttle bus stop.
Oh … I almost forgot … inexplicably, two Indio police officers were exhibiting a 50 year old Desert Spur Turtle at the Tamale Festival site. Mind you, this is the police force that, three years ago when we went to the Indio Golf Cart Parade, had a lights and siren equipped police cruiser golf cart. Perhaps a police force with a bit too much money ? ! ? And / or time on their hands ? ! ?
After supper we watched the season finale episode of Amazing Race. When I walked Bo before bedtime, a windy night, I found a large, unusual bird’s nest that blew out of the palm tree in our site.
DSK
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