Tamales and barking dogs

Today was tamale preparation day. Tomorrow my sister-in-law is joining me and we will spend a good chunk of the day making tamales... I'm hoping to get at least 120. But in order to spend the day making tamales, I had to spend today getting ready to make tamales. (There's a reason this only happens once a year!)

So far today I've poached two chickens, so I could make broth for the masa and to make the green chili chicken filling. I've also boiled and soaked so many chiles that my sinuses may never be the same. I'm all done except for the red chili and pork combination that is currently slow cooking in my oven.

So many chiles. There were also fresh jalepeno and Anaheim chiles.

It's not a great picture, but this is the finished chicken and green chili filling.

Broth for masa.

Pork and red chili sauce. That sauce is thick and is made from 18+ chiles.

But really what I want to tell you about are the terribly fierce guard dogs which live in our house. Kenzie has always been a bit territorial, which I really appreciate when I'm home alone at night. He can sound incredibly fierce. Olive likes to copy whatever Kenzie does. She also is extremely protective of A. No one should ever try to get between Olive and her person in a threatening manner, because I cannot guarantee what would happen. Both dogs have big barks that sound a little scary if you don't know them.

It's nice the dogs love their people. It's nice to be protected. (I think.) It's certainly loud sometimes. It's also nice to be alerted to someone in the drive or in the yard. When the dogs do start in on their crazy barking, I will always check on what's going on. Sometimes it's just a dog from next door, but other times it is someone who has come up the drive. It's good to be aware of these things.

Well, today, in the middle of the cooking, both dogs start going berserk. Their hackles are up and they are not sounding at all friendly. The barking just does not stop, and I think they both would have gone through the glass of the doors if they could have figured out how. People start heading towards the windows thinking it must be something terribly serious out there. To hear the dogs, you would not have been out of line to think that indeed the zombie apocalypse had begun right in our very own yard. I like to have some warning before the zombies arrive, so I start to look out the window at what is causing the dogs such major distress. 

I look. And I look. And finally I spot what is so very dangerous and distressing. What is this thing that is causing the dogs to act like wild slathering beasts, as they bark and bark and bark next to their friend the quail? 

It's a chicken. 

One lonely chicken out for a stroll.

The dogs may never be the same.