Nail in tree.

I love cajun cooking. Made a huge pot of sausage & chicken gumbo for the last party. Yum.

Sounds yummy. Do you use okra in it?

no, we only have frozen okra here.....I use celery, peppers, garlic, and either onions or scallions...(I always confuse my gumbo recipe with my etouffee and my jambalaya recipes...one takes onions one takes scallions, and one takes shallots...a lot of times I just substitute..yes I should double check before heading to the store..lol).
Anyway I'm big on fresh not frozen, plus the kids are in picky stages, I don't think they'd eat okra.

Please let me know the one that takes shallots. Ours did great this year. Thanks.

I use all three interchangeably or together...I always use frozen okra...let it thaw and put it in the skillet on low and cook it till it breaks down even further...when it is rather a paste consistency add it to the rest of the veggies while they are saute-ing. Kids won't even know it is there and it is what is used to thicken the roux. Sort of Gumbo glue. grin Do you make red or brown jambalaya?

okra glue that's funny! I use butter & flour for roux....sometimes olive oil & flour.
I do use the 3 things interchangeably, also, I always have onions in the house, but if I want to be precise I'll go out for scallions/shallots or whatever.
I don't know if it's red or brown, it has tomatoes in it does that make it red?
I like to throw shrimp in all three dishes also.

You make a creole gumbo. Creole recipes use tomatoes, Cajun recipes use meat stock and roux.
I had a small meltdown over Red Lobsters commercial for Wood grilled shrimp jambalaya with rice...Jambalaya IS rice with stuff added to it. That seems to be a hard concept to get across....original jambalaya was rice cooked with a hambone for flavor and whatever veggies on hand thrown in, later it became seafood or game or fowl...it is such good food I hate to see cajun cooking misrepresented on national TV.

I agree. It's a meltdown of the culture just for the money.

Last week I made a pot of Pasta Fagioli soup. Originally it was a no meat Lenten dish but now recipes begin with "brown two pounds of ground round". I finally found the one I wanted and it was great.

thanks Moon, I like to be correct...the cookbook I have does say creole & cajun on the cover, so I guess they covered their bases...my husband & I have wondered what is the difference, now we know!
You'll be happy to know I've never seen Red Lobster's commercials :) I rarely watch TV. I also turn my nose up at chain restaurants. I'm such a food snob.
Chain restaurants would do well to market to each region, instead of one blanket ad for the whole country.

The culture and cuisine here are unique...it is okay to copy it, just don't junk it up and call it cajun.

Growing up, I was raised protestant, but our neighbor was New York Italian. Every year for Good Friday, she would bring over a big pot of Pasta Fagioli for her good neighbors even if they do go to the wrong church....she was a trip and it didn't have meat in it.

ok I have to make a confession...I sometimes serve the etouffee on angel hair pasta with garlic bread & red wine :)

There is nothing wrong with that. Etouffe is more of a stew to be served over....fill in the blank....The name does not imply the ingredients as does jambalaya.

I don't call it cajun! I call it Italian etouffee!
lol
etouffee is a french word, a Romance language, like Italian, so that's acceptable.

right, Italian stew...

You guys don't know fish bait when it is right out in front of you. I was talking about the dynamite. Guaranteed results, everytime.

Ya'll are also starving me to death. I ate supper about five and was doing alright until the food chain started. Lord, am I hungry. I like all of that good stuff. Like my gumbo aged for two or three days for it to get right and like it hot. Pasta, any way you fix it, I like it.

Etouffee is the only way I've ever eaten crawfish and liked it. We had a principal at our school who was from Lake Charles that really could cook Cajun food. He didn't speak English until he started school. Man was that good.

please tell me what part of the crawfish do you EAT? It looks like all shell. At least with lobsters I know what I'm doing *grin*
And thanks to Pirl I'm now craving those New York deli black & white cookies...

Sorry Jim, I thought you were talking about the andouille sausage. I was laughing so hard at Pirl attacking the boxelder with a sausage link, I didn't even see the dynamite....

You eat the tails, any claw meat large enough to fool with and the fat. And you can boil the heads for stock, but that's where I draw the line....darn Yankee sensibilities...grin

Lots of the kids I went to school with had to translate for their parents....I grew up "down da bayou"

Ok, lobsters have tails & claws big enough to fool with, crawfish do not....that looks like a LOT of work for a teeny tiny bite!
I was at the same time laughing about the sausage link attack and envying her her maple. I have maple envy.
And I'd never waste andouille sausage on a fish...that stuff is expensive here!

Hey guys, Pirl had mentioned andouille sausage to me in an email. I'd never heard of it. Saw it in the store a couple of days ago. Started to buy some to try but Jo was rushing me so no sausage. Never had black beans either and saw some of them in a can. Didn't figure that was what Dave was talking about.

I use the andouille sausage in my creole recipes :) jambalaya, etouffee & gumbo.
Sometimes I make a stuffing out of it & stuff chicken breasts.

Gotta get a score card...the conversations are bleeding across threads and I keep having to look to make sure I am responding to the right person about the right topic...

Oh Jim, slice andouille and lightly brown it to use in gumbo or jambalaya Mais jamais...dat's some kinda good, ya Cher.

Got to try that good stuff. Any good on the grill?

good lord if we all lived closer together we'd be big as houses lol

I'm thinking about taking a few weeks off and driving to each of your houses and let you feed me one of those good meals your writing about. I could do some weeding to work it off and maybe keep the ole weight down.

Everyone was busy chatting food as I was sleeping. No wonder I was so restless!

They've changed pork so dramatically that there's seldom much flavor left so I do enjoy sausages of all kinds but Andouille and Chorizo are even great as an omelet filler - a real wake up call in the morning.

I do make my own chicken stock and have a bag in the freezer for leftover onion chunks, carrot peelings, carrot and celery ends, etc. so when I want to make a pot of it all the veggies are ready. Love the smell in the house when we wake up and the crock pot is going with the stock.

In the end I didn't beat the tree with any type of sausage but I did use a food product, vinegar. Now I'm probably repeating myself but I did stick with the food family and decided against the dynomite.

Jim - please tell our audience about your minister friend and the supper/dinner story. And Jim - please don't try Jambalya on the grill - much too messy!

Here's a lobster roll, two in fact, that we enjoyed in Maine last year.

Has anyone seen Julia and Julie? It was great fun!

mmm chorizo!
I want those big lobster claws right now! yum!

Our local grocery makes some of the best green onion Chorizo and Itallian sausages. A chorizo, sweet onion and pepper omelet with smoky Chipotle really gets the day going.

We make a pretty good oro bianco with chicken breasts, Italian sausage, mushrooms and a creamy white wine sauce, with thin slices of browned garlic....served over wild and pecan rice. and Black bean, chirozo and chicken enchiladas work for this crew.....along with lean pork and chirozo jambalaya.....num-yummy.

Haven't seen J&J yet, but it is on my list.

My problem with food is people who won't give things a try. I have had okra in soups and I do like to experiment with all kinds of food. How boring life would be eating the same food items repeatedly and knowing every Monday night would be meat loaf for years on end. I'd be bored to death.

Pirl I make my own stock a lot of the times too, what a great idea to freeze veggie scraps. I freeze my steak bones for beef stock, never thought to freeze my veggie scraps.

I agree, it is way to easy to fall in a rut and meals become chores rather than good times with the family...One meal a week around here includes something new or different. Everybody critiques and makes suggestions and we discuss what we would like to try...getting a teen to contribute to dinner conversation with actual words instead of grunts and shrugs is good stuff....get them in the kitchen young....lots of fun and makes for a more capable youngster. BUT, just make sure they also learn to help with the clean up.

My oldest friend and I put together a "You are on your own" survival guide for our kids (6 of them) full of easy quick recipes of favorite foods, easy desserts, kitchen tips, cooking times for meats, ingredient substitution guide, laundry hints and general easy repairs for everything from hems to repairing lamps and leaky faucets. We slipped the pages into plastic sleeves and bound them in small vinyl ring binders....nice feeling when you walk into your child's home and see it prominently displayed with the cookbooks....grin

I know someone who has broccoli every night as their vegetable. I'd learn to hate it very fast.

wow what a neat idea Jean! Cooking also helps them to learn fractions, have them double or half recipes.
I hate meatloaf...i make it but i don't like it.

I eat a lot of broccoli...good power food. I like it with lemon & pepper. not every night though!

I love that idea!

For Christmas one year I made an A to Z (my maiden initials) cookbook for my daughter with photos of her most prominent but also photos of my parents and my son in it. So we have A is for Adorable and Apple Pie, etc. All of her favorite cookie recipes are in it as well as desserts and appetizers.

I like broccoli cooked briefly, then I put oil in the pan with garlic, almost let it brown, add hot red peppers and toss it all together.

Pirl what a nice gift!

Try rolling the meat mix out into a rectangle and layering thin slices of ham or proscuitto with grated parmesan or thinly sliced swiss cheese and then rolling it up like a jelly roll. You have to adjust for kids, but we also add thinly sliced seeded hot peppers, onion, and or bell pepper. It turns a plain lump of ground beef into a Roulade....Also make a quickie Shepherds pie by add mashed potatoes and cheese and rolling them up in the seasoned ground beef. You can pretty much make a stuffed meatloaf with any of your families favorites.

Thanks. It was a good idea but I had no idea how much work was involved when it got to printing the recipe to fit the precise size of the 4 x 6" space allowed for it.

Some of the letters were challenging!