- They're done.
- How much are they?
- Ah,15, 15 a dozen, yes, sir.
Traditions to me, it means everything.
It reminds me of my roots, where I come from.
It reminds me that at the end of the day,
our family is strong and that's really all we need.
You said only six pieces of bread or more.
- Give me eight.
- Eight.
- We have been in the Creedmoor area since 1929.
We were known for our tamales.
- Cokes and Sprites and Big Red.
My grandfather would graze cattle and pigs and whatnot.
When they would kill the pigs,
we would do all of the cuts of the animal.
They had the head left over and they're like,
"Hey, let's see what we can do with it."
And I believe they boiled it and they grounded it up
and they made some pretty good tamales.
And from that point on, that's what we've used.
- El rancho had always been there before.
My mother was always in the kitchen with my grandfather.
It's just something that she's always continued to carry on.
- Is there more wings in there?
- I was a first-generation college student.
I had the opportunity to be able to go
and my parents made that possible
and I'm forever grateful for that.
I went on to study, exercise sports science.
And I was on my way to,
to start building a career from that.
And that's when we lost our house to a flood
and I put my degree and everything else
on the back burner for a little while.
My family needed me more than anything.
I needed to be here with them.
I needed to help them rebuild.
I could only imagine how my parents felt
to lose all of that, you know,
60 plus years of their life,
just down the down the flood waters.
Every time it rains, you know,
you have to think this is going to be it,
you know, is this going to happen again?
It was a struggle.
I went through a lot of dark times with that.
Just even though I knew I didn't do anything
to deserve a flood or anything like that, it just,
it put me in a weird place mentally.
Eventually I got to a point where I was like,
you know, it's time to get up.
- Do you have them in yet? No.
I thought about it
and I was like, hey, we cook.
- These are the spicy ones.
- I wanted to have a food truck
that had tamales all year round
and we jump started our business in 2019.
- It's better like this.
I feel like a tamale has to be juicy.
I always joke around that
if you don't see the orange grease on the tamale,
it's not the real tamale.
I feel like it's the hog head.
I feel like that is definitely the big kick to it.
Hello Ma'am, so you're from Lockhart?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, nice.
We sell them all year round.
I'm actually own a, we own a food truck
in Austin, Alicia Tacoriendo.
- Okay.
- It's all based on my mother's recipes.
And, it's like a hundred year old recipe.
It's my grandfather's recipe actually.
But we have spicy pork, regular pork.
And we also have chicken today.
So what would you like?
This is kind of like a delicacy in Texas.
- When he got home, I was like, oh,
we're going to go have to go and get some tamale.
- There's also a running joke that it's so that we have
something to unwrap during Christmas.
You know what I mean? Maybe times are hard
and hey, at least your stomach's full, right?
(Church bells rings)
- I think to be able to sit down and have something
that's wholeheartedly made and it feeds the soul.
I think that's what people want during the holidays.
You know, they want to have those memories
and, and they want to maybe remember their ancestors.
That one time made them.
- Open it.
It's still very much so the way my grandpa did it.
The way my mother has always done it.
Yes Ma'am, I'm glad you could smell them.
That's a good sign.
I feel like it's very vital that this continues
to be passed on throughout our family
because it's our legacy.
It's made with love is made from the heart.
It's made from the struggle from, from passion,
from pain, from, from all of that.
(soft music)