When a house becomes a “HOME”.

A house is a building that a family lives in. A home is that house where that family makes long lasting special memories.

Our family loves to find any excuse to get together and on most holidays our houses are filled with 20 or 30 family and friends.

Let me share a special moment when my house became a home.

We decided to make a typical South American dish called Tamales. It is a corn based dough with seasoned pork and vegetables that is wrapped in banana leafs. You can find a similar recipe HERE.

The procedure is rather long and time consuming but it is usually done with the help of the whole family. In our case only my mother is considered the expert in making Tamales. We decided to have my mother share her recipe and teach it to everyone in the family, including the little ones as young as 5 years old.

My memories of this event includes my brothers making fun of me because I made some tamales with duck instead of pork, My aunt Connie working hard mixing that huge pile of dough, The little cousins making dough balls for the individual tamales, the 2 family dogs, Max and Panda running around the house chasing each other, the different shapes of everyone’s tamales, but more importantly everybody was involved in the tamale making activity.

The next day when I was looking at all the pictures that we took of the whole family involved in the event is when I realized that the kitchen and my house became a place where the family is making lasting memories. That’s when those rooms in my house becomes a magical place called HOME.