Me and my wife are from far south Texas, McAllen to be exact, just a stone's throw from the Rio Grande River. Interestingly we are both half Mexican and half Irish (what a combo). My wife's parents still live in McAllen. Every year during the holiday season, they'll make the nine hour drive to Fort Worth hauling an ice chest packed full of tamales (of the highest quality), and fixings for menudo. Cooking menudo is a New Years Eve tradition, at least it is in south Texas.
There are several regional variations of menudo. This south Texas version calls for hominy and.......
...beef tripe (stomach and intestines), pigs feet, peppers, and a variety of spices. Menudo has a special smell when it's cooking. To be honest it smells terrible, at least until the spices are mixed in.
This is my father-in-law scraping the seeds out of the peppers. Excuse the mess in the kitchen, we had about sixteen people in our little house. It's hard to keep things orderly with that kind of crowd.
After a few days of eating tamales, my mother-in law changes things up by making a kind of tamale casserole by adding chili and cheese. Please note; if you are planning to try tamales for the first time, remove the corn husk wrapper before eating. They are much better that way.
