Somerton Tamale Festival

Now this was a good tamale festival. It was much smaller than Indio, but focused on tamales, not a bunch of other vendors. I think there were as many cooks at Somerton as Indio. The price at Indio was $3; at Somerton they were $1.50, and a portion of that went to charity. My favorite was by far the last one I had, and then I was too full to try out more of hers. That one was a marinated beef with onion, carrot, and potato, like a pasty or a peroshki with a Mexican flair. Good stuff.

Tangelos and Mineolas are being picked now, but the bulk of the acreage is devoted to lemons. It's unfathomable to me what we do with all those lemons.

Handling lemons is very much like apples in the Yakima Valley. Climb a ladder, pick and drop into a bag, transfer to a bin, haul the bins to the sorting lines. The trees are tough enough to support an extension ladder laid into them. But lemons don't all come ripe at the same time; picking the ripe ones involves an eye for their readiness, or the tree won't give them up, so it's slower. You can't strip a lemon tree like you can an apple tree.

Tomorrow I meet up with friends Dave and Kathy on the other side of town. We've hung out in Chimicum in Washington, looked at alligators in Texas, and traded wines in Arkansas. Good folk.