Update on the Gumbo

As told by my husband this is the recipe for the gumbo:

Boil a chicken, cool it off and take it off the bone.
Slice some sausage (polish, etc.) and fry it a little.
Make a roux.
To the roux add onions, celery and garlic. Stir it up and cook a little to wilt it.
To the roux add lots of chicken broth, the chicken and the sausage. Let that cook a couple of hours. At the end add shrimp, crawfish tails (these come in a package in the fish section in WalMart) and sliced okra. Cook just til these are done. Serve over rice. Oh and somewhere in there season with salt and pepper. For those of you who like things hot you can add a can of rotel, cajun seasoning, etc.

Sorry ya'll but that's the recipe...no amounts, no real time. You'll just have to experiment. But it's well worth the experiment.

Someone asked about the shellfish - if you're allergic just leave them out. When we first married Jerry's mother made okra gumbo, which was this same "recipe" but without the shrimp and crawfish tails.

Let me know if you try it!

We're Adding To Our Numbers

We had 35 people here Saturday night at my family reunion. Thirty Six if you count this little guy. Well, they tell us it's a guy - he's due October 9. What do you think? It's a little early to tell I'm thinking...want to guess if they're right?

Now That's A Lot of Gumbo!

For the reunion last weekend my husband cooked a pot of Gumbo. He's the best gumbo cooker that ever was...and that's the truth. And this was the best pot of gumbo he's ever made! He learned to cook it from his mother and I have absolutely no idea what he does but his whole family and my whole family and all our friends who've had it love it. It took 2 days but they ate the whole thing!

New Neighbors

We have new neighbors at our house. On our house? In our house? Whatever! We have babies...I'm counting at least 4 beaks there. I have no idea what they are, sparrows maybe? Congratulations are in order!

Leftovers

Getting ready for having masses of people at my house for several days meant having lots and lots...and lots and lots of food. But even though they made a good try, not everything was eaten. Over the last couple of days I've been trying to consolidate what I could and eat what I couldn't. That's not good for my diet but being the conservative person that I am I'm determined to count the points AND eat the food. And I'm also trying to counteract all that I ate over the weekend by walking not once but twice a day. Yesterday we walked 45 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the late afternoon. We've been on the morning walk today and plan to go again this afternoon.

I keep thinking there should be some creative way to use up some of this stuff but tell me...what do you do with potato salad? I don't think you can freeze it and besides, I'm trying to empty my freezer, not fill it up. I have a whole loaf of whole wheat bread, not to mention parts of other loaves. I made a wonderful - really wonderful - bread pudding for the reunion but I don't think whole wheat bread would be good in that. And again I'm trying not to freeze anything. Since we'll be gone for several months pretty soon I want my freezer to be as empty as possible. And then there's cereal..several different kinds of cereal, some opened, some not. What in the world am I going to do with more-cereal-than-we-can-eat?

Thinking about leftovers has fostered some other sort-of related thoughts. Getting ready for the reunion meant not only buying and cooking food. It meant getting my house "ready." My husband and I have different thoughts about what ready means and different timelines for doing the necessary things. I like for everything to be done, finished, settled at least a couple of days before. He, on the other hand, likes to be sweeping the porch as company drives up the driveway. He doesn't see the sense in washing the glass light cover in the entry where no one but me ever goes. I'm not sure I see the sense in that either but I wanted it done. :) Vacuuming and dusting are obvious things that are needful but there are less obvious things that we women seem to place lots of importance on when someone is going to staying in our homes for several days. Like the glass light cover. Or the .....? Where do you want to be sure you've cleaned? After all, I might not have thought of that place and I might need to clean it too!

Confusion?

We had a wonderful family weekend! There were 35 here for supper Saturday night with children and babies everywhere. Everything in my house feels slightly sticky from their little fingers and I love the thought of that. There were tornadoes and thunderstorms that tried to dampen our fun but we didn't let them. We just lined beds up everywhere we could put one and slept just fine knowing we were together. We laughed and we cried and we ate and we talked but one little incident summed up the event quite well I think. Ella, who is 4 years old, is the granddaughter of my sister. She calls my sister Nanny. Ella and Laney, my granddaughter, were born on the same day and though they don't really look alike their personalities are quite similar - they are full of energy, determined to do what they want to do when they want to do it, and can melt your heart with a look. One afternoon after playing in the backyard for hours Ella came running in the house straight to the rocking chair where I was sitting. She said, "I picked these flowers for you!" She had a fistful of azalea blooms (yes, blooms only, no stems) squeezed tight in that tiny hand and she carefully poured them into my cupped hands. I thanked her elaborately for thinking of me and she looked up at me with her big, round eyes and said, "Are you Grandma?" Bless her heart, she knew I was somebody she ought to know but she wasn't quite sure who!

And just exactly who was I? I find myself in a position I never though I'd have...matriarch of the family. You know you read that term sometimes in books and it brings to mind a picture of the mother/grandmother who brings all her family together and binds them into a cohesive unit. I don't know how much binding I do but I do hold the title of oldest so I'm the matriarch by default. It's not a bad place to be, but I do wish Mama were still here and still had the title. I'm pretty sure I'm not really this old. I'm pretty sure I'm dreaming it and will soon wake up to find I'm really still a teenager. Or is that a nightmare...being a teenager again. :)