Thibodaux, Fontaineaux, the place is buzzin'

I was hooked from "....if you happen to be a cow." :-D

Tell us how it turns out!

It does start out a bit dry but then it really gets funny.

I would love to have a cookbook made up of narrative recipes -- I like cooking suggestions more than cooking facts. In my kitchen, measuring devices are used for baking but not much else.

I took a folklore class where we had to interview people, there was a term, "folkways" is coming to mind but I can't remember. Anyway, I got some narrative recipes that way, SO cool!!!! (I remember one was about how to make chopped liver and included all sorts of digressions about I think the teller's aunt -- what I remember is that the teller did NOT like this woman and insulted her in all kinds of highly entertaining ways.)

Man, where is that paper? That was fun.

It is very funny but I gotta tell ya, I have never known gumbo with beans and peas and corn in it. Well, that's not true. In Savannah, my sister-in-law prepared what she called gumbo with a tomato base and those ingredients and it was very tasty but in my neck of the woods, that's called a vegetable stew or soup, minus the seafood, of course.
My mother's gumbo always began with a roux and consisted of okra, the triage of bell pepper, celery and onion, shrimp, ham and either crab or chicken parts (legs, wings, thighs, etc). It was eaten over rice.
And her drink of choice while cooking was a can of good 0l' Budweiser, with a pack of Pall Malls on the side.

I've never had a tomato based gumbo either, eoe and thought it was an interesting turn myself. It does make me think of "red-eye gravy" though which, if I recall, is gravy made with tomatos when there wasn't any meat in the house.

I want to go have dinner with your mother!

Mr B and I went to a fancy steak house here once and they had gumbo on the menu for $14 a bowl. I thought that sounded pretty expensive for leftovers!

Yeah soz, where is that paper?

I would love to see more recipes written in a similar vein.

Typically I make my roux and assemble to soup on top -- this time I'm going to assemble my soup and add the roux later, like this recipe suggests. That way, I can simmer the stock for a chuck of the day and thicken it all up later.

Hey! My gumbo turned out pretty darn good.

I was alarmed because when I added the okra the stock went really dark -- which makes me worry a bit about the quality of okra we get here. Okra is a real oddity here and it takes a special trip to the one store I know that sells it.

I forged ahead though and it looks a bit crazy but it tastes really good.

I turned out to be a perfect gumbo kind of day. Very fallish nip in the air. Plus, my lovely neighbor came over to invite Mo and I to the park. She just had her second baby and is losing her mind. Her older boy, just about a year younger than Mo, ended up spending most of the day at our house after the park and, no worries, dinner had been cooking since before noon.

Everything is simmering and bubbling and smelling wonderful. I'm going to stick Mo in the bath, get some rice on the range and crack open a beer.

God help me, I find myself wishing for a Pall Mall and a kitchen full of friends.

Soz, eoe, there are sure to be leftovers if you have some frequent flier miles you need to use up!

Sounds good.Thanks for the invite.

E.G. and I just now had a "we aren't having another kid, are we?" conversation, so this was kind of nice to see:



I mean, not nice for her, of course, and lucky her to have you around to take care of the older guy for a while.

As for the gumbo, I'm so there!!!

Reminds me of a topic I wanted to start, too...

Wonderful recipe, but I'm with eoe about traditional gumbo. (I grew up in Louisiana, but Mom & Dad were Yankees. Hence no gumbo was cooked in our house - ever - but I ate a lot of it everywhere else.)

No beans, peas, or corn. And it is always served over rice or with rice spooned onto the top of it. Oh and another variation was turkey gumbo, useful for that post T'giving turkey carcass.

I'm glad yours turned out so well, boomer. I'm definitely in the mood for some gumbo now.

Yeah soz. Lovely neighbor is a good Mormon girl and second son is sweet and gentle but older boy is insane with grief. She is having a hard time.

My neice has a daughter (Monkey) the same age as sozlet and Mo, she is expeting another baby in December. Monkey is already mad.

That has to be a hard decision to make. Haven't been there, haven't done that, myself though.


Raised by Yankees in Louisianna, mac?

Lordy, lordy, lordy.....

You're lucky to be sane and competent enough to type! When you write your biography, I'm first in line to buy it.

Has Monkey been an only child 'til now?

Definitely hard. What it comes down to is that nobody (me, E.G., sozlet) wants that right now, but we aren't sure if we should just push through that and do it because it's the right thing to do... but you can just tell from that sentence formulation what the answer is, can't you?

By the way did you see my "cooking with kids" topic? Would love to get any ideas you might have.

And mac, I'll be second in line!

Still a little warm for gumbo in this part of the country. But because my taste buds are now going wild, maybe I'll do a little shrimp etoufee or a jambalaya this weekend.

I could live on etuoufee.

Mine never turns out right. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Luckily there is a restaruant here that serve a good bowl.

Once in a while they even have sweet potato pecan pie.

If I close my eyes, I'm almost home.

Thibodeaux
Wll, it's been a long time since I've eaten real gumbo. We used to have it pretty much once a week, with a big bowl of white rice passed around for everyone to take a helping and dump it in their bowl.

And I miss file powder. I don't know if you can even find it up here.

Tomkitten, I'll send you some if you're desperate. You can't have gumbo without it, IMO.

Thibodeaux
Thanks, mac, you're very kind, but I don't cook any more.

They don't understand okra "up here".

Gumbo file


I see fresh okra in my market here sometimes...