Masa disaster protocol

Jake announced this morning that he wanted to learn how to make tamales. Not the easy kind from a box—actual tamales with masa from scratch. I should have been suspicious when he pulled out three different YouTube tutorials and started taking notes like he was studying for finals.

Masa disaster protocol

This is him forty minutes into the process, completely covered in masa and looking like he’s performing surgery. The concentration is real. The technique is… developing. He’s spread more masa on the counter than on the corn husks, but his determination is honestly adorable.

Victory pose with the world’s most asymmetrical tamale

Two hours and one kitchen explosion later, we managed to produce exactly six tamales of varying shapes and structural integrity. Jake’s holding the prize winner—which looks like it went through a blender but tastes surprisingly decent. The cleanup took longer than the actual cooking, and I’m still finding masa in places masa should never be.

Next time we’re starting with quesadillas and working our way up. But watching him wrestle with corn husks like his life depended on it was worth every minute of scrubbing masa off the ceiling fan.