Great looking sticks! They look much better than the ones I get from the butcher's counter a store while on my commute to work sometimes.
As for Menudo... About 6 months ago I sat my mother down and we made some. I measured every ingredient so I had a real recipe not the ol "some of this , some of that" kind of recipe on such potentially complex dish. We did it in an electric pressure cooker (5-6 qt) which turns the whole process from an overnight event of boiling and such, into about 1.5 hour "set and forget" cook!
If you guys are interested I'll post it so you can make it anytime and remove the mystery of making the dish. BTW, her's destroys basically every other menduo out there.
Same with her tamales, they are in a league of their own compared to other tamales. No bland, dry, little tamales lacking meat. They are out of this world! Her tamales are also next on my pressure cooker recipe list. I want to be able to buy a piece of pork and do everything in the same crock pot (cook meat, steam tamales, etc.) to know the amount of ingredients it takes and the number of tamales it makes to basically do it all in the 5-6qt pressure cooker. Someday soon it will happen... someday :)