Dia de los Muertos Festival and Food

I’m a bit upset I only made it to 17 posts during Vegan MOFO. But I think I did pretty good for a first-timer! Hopefully I’ll have more time to post next year 🙂

But all of that is in the past! And so is everything in this post, because the holiday was two days ago! Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) was celebrated on Monday. I had originally planned on making some of the traditional foods, such as tamales and pan de muerto (bread of the dead), but my day was already booked up as it was. Me and my boyfriend did, however, make it to the Dia de los Muertos Festival at the Bare Hands Gallery in downtown Birmingham.

Day of the Dead altars

Uncreepy.

All Hallow Eve is near.

Since I had already bought all the ingredients to make tamales and pan de muerto, I figured I would go ahead and make them. So that’s what I did today.

Butternut Squash Tamales

Butternut Squash Tamales

I got this recipe off the Food Network website. This was my first time making tamales, so I’m not sure if I did everything correctly. But they still tasted good! 🙂 I had these with some Spanish rice; made with white rice, a taco seasoning packet, and some frozen peas. (Hey! Tamales take a LONG time, so I deserved a few shortcuts! haha.)

Pan de Meurto - Bread of the Dead

 Pan de Muerto – Bread of the Dead

For the pan de muerto, I used this recipe. I halved the recipe to make two, small loaves. I added a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and accidentally didn’t halve the sugar. I replaced the egg with Ener-G egg replacer, and used a glaze of orange juice and agave nectar. I sprinkled some cinnamon sugar on the loaves before baking.

And that’s how I celebrated Dia de los Muertos! I was going to paint some paper mache skulls and masks, but I never got around to it. Again, there’s always next year! 🙂

– Andrea

Tags: 2009, Day of the Dead, dia de los muertos, vegan