Recipes /
Anne & Ward's Tamale Pie
Although nowadays we don't eat meat very often, it is a fond memory of the tamale pie that Anne and I used to eat that prompted me to write this down. I used to eat tamale pie as a boy too, but we try to avoid meat these days simply for the reason that greens give more energy. The recipe itself is a version compiled from several internet sources as well as my memory of my Mom's own version, which she may have got from somewhere else. By this I mean only that I remember how tamale pie used to taste to me, and have sought to find the flavour that I recalled as being pleasant to my palate. More than one internet recipe was also consulted for guidance.
Beef is rich in nutrients, although the beef of today is not the same as that of times past, and because of feeding practices it is advisable to stay organic.
I feel confident in my abilities today to prepare food in a way which I enjoy personally, although this was not always the case. In a cockroach-infested room on the eighth floor of an apartment building at 55 Paisley Boulevard in Mississauga where I lived for a time as a bachelor in the autumn of 1980, my skills may have been less than adequate. The tendency to oversalt my dishes while still in the pot caused me to try all sorts of ways to salvage a dish gone wrong. I learned then that salt is not compensated with sweet or sour, and that seasoning is best done with caution. More to the point, I learned that our own desires do not make a winning combination of flavours, but rather is it the case that only Jehovah knows what works and what doesn't work. So it was and it is through prayer that I came to rely more upon my Creator to help me when I desired to prepare a tasty dish.
As for units and measures, one tablespoon (=T) is the same as 15 ml or three times a teaspoon (=t). That makes a teaspoon 5 ml. Since an ounce is about 29 or 30 ml (say 30 for easy calculations), a tablespoon is about one half of an ounce. In other words, 2T = 1oz (liquid measures).
Another thing about measurement systems is that the American liquid ounce differs from the Canadian and British ounce. This I know, because the Canadian gallon has 160 oz to the American gallon's 128 oz, making the American gallon smaller by some amount. Were the ounces the same, the American gallon is then 80% of the Canadian gallon. But no, sadly, this is not the case. The American gallon is .8326747 of a Canadian gallon, which means that the American ounce is about 4% bigger than the Canadian ounce! Go figure.
Requires a large pot and a double boiler.
