Fourth of July and Paula Deen's Southern Cooking Bible's Real Deal Gumbo

I love the Fourth of July for a number of reasons.  One is that it is right smack in the middle of the summer and gives you a reason to celebrate country, family, friends, and fireworks.   Second is that it gives you license to eat yummy food with the Food Police's blessing.   This year we decided to celebrate at my Dad's pool  with Husband Fred, Food Police, Son-in-Law, and Crazy Aunt Susie.  You know it is a party if Crazy Aunt Susie is in attendance!!  I must do a blog post on Susie!!  She is something else. 

Our menu was simple - Susie's wonderful ribs, crock pot pulled pork sandwiches and vinegar slaw from www.southernplate.com, potato salad, and Food Police's Healthy Corn Salad and Publix's Key Lime Pie.  I am surprised she let us have Key Lime Pie.  That is the best doggone pie I have ever had. If you have not had one, you must go get one right now.  They even have mango-key lime pie.  I getting off subject.  I must be hungry!

After gorging ourselves, we decided to head out to the pool.  Now this family is competitive, and no gathering would be complete without a little sports action.  I had purchased a pool volleyball set that had a bonus basketball goal.  We got it situated, divided up into unfair teams of the young vs the old, and got the game started.  Well.....can you say we should have hired an athletic trainer for this event to treat the injuries that occurred??  It reminded me of the movie - Meet the Parents - when they are all in the pool playing volleyball, the game gets heated, and Ben Stiller's character spiked the ball and broke the soon-to-be bride's nose!!  Son-in-Law must have thought it would be oh so funny to spike the ball as well.  He didn't count on spiking it right into my chest.  For a split second, I thought I was in ventricular defibrillation.  I couldn't catch my breath for a minute or so, but I recovered, gave him the old teacher evil eye, and said "OK Buddy!!  Game on!"  I get mad any time my team is losing.  We were losing in dramatic fashion this day so at one point I got even madder when I couldn't hit a ball back and instead of throwing it lady-like back to the young ones, I proceeded to heave it across the net and hit Food Police right in the face!!  Needless to say, she thought I did it on purpose.  She started screaming "Concussion!", and I started screaming "Ventricular fibrillation!"  Daddy started screaming "Stop yelling!!  A nice preacher man lives behind me!"  I asked "What does it matter if a preacher lives behind you Daddy?"  He replied "I don't want him to think we are heatherns!"  Really!!  What would make him possibly think that??!! The game continued, and the oldies lost in a bad way!!

Then Son-in-Law had the grand idea to transform the volleyball net into a basketball goal.  He wanted to play HORSE.  Now his idea of HORSE is to jump off the diving board and shoot the ball or run along the side of the pool, jump, and dunk the ball in dramatic fashion.  I said "Nope! I am out!!  I know my limitations!!"  Husband Fred, on the other hand, thought he could go toe-to-toe with a 29 year old ex-high school basketball star.  I tried to talk him out of it by reasoning with him, but that only made him want to do it more.  I thought to myself  "This ought to be good!"  Well, Husband Fred hung in there pretty well until the showboating started.  Son-in-Law made the shot where he started out of the pool, ran 3 or 4 steps, leaped, dunked, and landed gracefully in the water.   Husband Fred, of course, missed the shot and landed hard on his right leg in the pool while at the same time creating a tsunami.  For a minute, I thought he had for sure broken his leg.  He had this weird look on his face like the time he sat on the ceramic Christmas tree star in the attic and made a huge puncture hole in his buttocks, but that is another story for another day.  I examined him and decided that he had aggravated his knee which he had already aggravated at Body Pump but that is another story too.  He limped out of the pool, sat down, and asked for the Ibuprofen.  Really????  I shook my head and headed up to the house to eat some Key Lime Pie.

Now on to the recipe...........I decided I would cook out of  Paula Deen's Southern Cooking Bible.  Can I say that this one fantastic cookbook??  Man oh man!!  I still using the Eeny Meeny Miny Mo Game to select what I will cook.  This time "it" chose The Real Deal Gumbo, and Paula is right!!  It is the real deal.  I have eaten a lot of wonderful gumbo in my day, and this recipe stands up against any of them.

Here she is in all her glory!!  This picture looks a little small!  Sorry I was messing around with my I-Phone and Instagram!!

You will need shrimp, smoked sausage, butter, garlic, onion, bell pepper, flour, okra, and chicken broth.  I forgot to put the Cajun seasoning in the picture.  Good grief.

Saute the okra for about 3 minutes to get rid of the slime!  I hate okra slime!

While the okra is de-sliming, chop up a bell pepper, an onion, and 3 cloves of garlic.

You get to make a roux by mix cooking flour and butter.  It takes about 5 minutes to get it this color.

First, you add the chopped onion, bell pepper, and garlic to the roux and cook for 2 minutes.  Then you add the rest of the ingredients minus the shrimp, and cook for 20 minutes.  Salt and pepper to taste.  I added a can of diced tomatoes at this point.  She did not have this in her recipe but I have always had tomatoes in gumbo!

Add the shrimp for the last few minutes and simmer until they turn this pretty pink color.

 

Here is the finished product.  I served it over rice, and it was delicious.  This is going in the recipe rotation.

Now here's the recipe......

The Real Deal Gumbo

Paula Deen's Southern Cooking Bible

1 T vegetable oil

1 C chopped okra, fresh or thawed frozen

3 T butter

3 T all-purpose flour

1 large yellow onion, chopped

1 large green bell pepper, chopped

1 T chopped garlic

*I added a can of diced tomatoes.*

4 C chicken broth

3/4 pound smoked sausage, chopped ( I used Turkey sausage)

1 tsp Cajun Seasoning

Salt and black pepper

1 pound, large shrimp, peeled and deveined

4 C cooked rice, for serving

Hot sauce, for serving

In a small skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. 
Add the okra and cook, stirring frequently until no longer slimy, about 3 minutes.  Set aside.

In a large suacepan, met the butter over medium heat.  Whisk in the flour and cook, stirring constantly, until it is a light chocolate color, about 5 minutes.

Add the onion, bell pepper, and garlic and cook for 2 minutes.  Add the okra,  broth, sausage, and Cajun seasoning and bring to a boil.  Reduce the heat to a simmer, cover, and cook for 20 minutes.  Season to taste with salt and black pepper.

Add the shrimp and simmer until they are pink and cooked through.  Serve over the rice.  Pass hot sauce at the table.

Now go have a great day......

 

 

 

Where I Have Been and Calling All Cooks' Atlanta Pork Chops and Rice

My goodness....I asked myself  "Where have I been?"  No really!!  I am concerned!!  My last post was May 5th.  That is pitiful.  I had to do some rewind on the old memory tape, and I realized where all I have been.  The first place I had been was the ending of the school year.  It is a massive undertaking to wind down a school year.  Only those who are educators know what I am talking about.  I won't go into the end of the year checklist that is two pages long where you have to run around the 1,000,000 square foot school looking for administrators to initial their line, or the textbook and equipment inventories, or the final posting of grades and completing the gradebook, or the cleaning out of the file cabinets and your desk, or the getting everything off the floor routine so they can perform the all-mighty waxing of the floors.  It truly is an undertaking, and it takes a week to recover!! 

The second place I had been was the beach for a week with Food Police, Son-in-Law, and Husband Fred.  Now that was a pleasure except for the daily food fights with Food Police.  Don't get me wrong - we do not have the traditional food fights where you actually have fun throwing food at one another.  NO............  Our food fights consist of heated discussions of what we should and should not eat for cholesterol, blood pressure, and weight issues.  Let me give you an example of exactly what I mean!!  I made crab-stuffed shrimp one evening and wanted to pair it with a baked potato and salad.  Does that sound good to you?  Yes!!  We even had fat free sour cream and dadgum fake spray butter to put on the potatoes plus fat free salad dressing.  Honey it was a party with all the trans-fat, cholesterol, sodium, and taste not in attendance!!  What can I say!!!  Woo-Hoo!!!  Then said party grinded to a screeching halt!!  "No" says Food Police.  "Let's do grilled yellow and zucchini squash instead of the potato.  It will be healthier!  We had a lot of carbs at lunch so we don't need the potato!!"  What???  We are hungry!!  Ugh!!  The three of us tried to argue our side of things, but the She-Devil (whoops) Food Police won!!  She has that way about her.  That jaw stuck out, and you know she meant business.  We all accepted the zucchini/yellow squash grill, but then I turned to my major passive-aggressive ways!!  I ate one of Son-in-Law's Little Debbie's Oatmeal Cakes (by the way thank goodness for Son-in-Law!!  I can always sneak some food from him.  He somehow can overpower Food Police and get his way with snacks!!  I must take a class from him!!)  I continued my passive-aggressive ways and began to eat Cheetos straight out of the bag at midnight because I was starving.  I got the Food Police death stare which can be rather frightening.   I wonder if she can read minds!!  On the positive side, we had no waterspouts this year that took our electricity away for 2 days - just sun, sea, family, and food fights. 

The third place I had been was my student's National competition in Orlando, FL at Disney World.  Kim and I took 18 students (adolescents - uh oh) on a charter bus.  Enough said!!  It actually was pretty stress-free.  The students behaved very well except for getting in a boiled egg fight, one team over-sleeping on a competition day, and holding up the bus on the way home because three of them got diarrhea from eating too much cheese dip at a restaurant in Valdosta, Ga . Horrors!! We had a 6th, 11th and top 25 in the nation.  I cannot complain!!  The excitement came when Kim and I rode the horrid Jedi - Mount Everest something something roller coaster in Animal Kingdom.  Now before I continue, let me tell you something about myself.  When I was younger, I put on my Bucket List to ride every major roller coaster in the US of A.  That was in the prehistoric age when the coasters weren't as high as the stratosphere, and didn't do all the horrible things they do now!!   I have ridden a standing coaster that goes upside down, a coaster that suspends you like you are flying, and the wooden coaster at Six Flags that feels like it is going to jump off the tracks!!  I just wanted you to know that I am not a scaredy cat when it comes to coasters. On to the story....We load up all giddy with excitement.  I checked my harness one thousand times to make sure it is locked and settled in for the ride.  We literally take off from 0-100 mph in 5 seconds, and then the darn Jedi coaster grinded to a halt half-way up the tracks pitching us forward and backward hard enough to give us whiplash in the blazing heat index of 100 degrees.  Kim began screaming at the top of her lungs something about it being stuck on the tracks.  I look at her and try to talk her down from her fever pitched hysteria.  I said something like "Oh just pretend we are at the beach lying in the sun soaking up some rays!"  She looked at me like I was growing horns out of my head and continued to scream.  She was frightening the 4-year old behind us!!  Yep!!  Then I start getting worked up because I feel like I am on fire.  You know how I hate the heat, and I thought this is how I am going to die - like a vampire in the sunshine pitched at 90 degrees on a roller coaster!!!  Somebody help us!!  Honestly, it was stopped for about 5 seconds, but she and I can be a little dramatic at times.  You think??  We whoosh on, and then the stupid thing pretends to have a broken track.  The next thing I know we are going backwards in the dark, and my old body didn't know which end was up!!  It was the horror of horrors.  I ended the ride feeling a lot dizzy, and thought I had had a stroke.  I thought this is why they tell "older" people not to ride roller-coasters!!  I did a quick neuro-check on myself and found that all was intact.  I bolted off that thing and never looked back.  I thought I will never ever get on a roller-coaster again!!  I proceeded to ride Space Mountain and the Rocking Roller coaster.  The new thing now on roller coasters is called a "Photo-Bomb!"  You learn alot from hanging around the youngsters.  A Photo-bomb is when you anticipate where the picture of you is taken on the ride, and you make some dumb gesture (only nice ones) or some weird looking face.  Well......... and I wish I had a picture for you, Kim and I tried this out.  I decided I would make the blank stare no emotion face.  I saw this for real when long ago my family went with my friend Cathy's family to Six Flags.  She hates roller coasters but said she had to ride them with her children.  When I asked why she said "Well if the coaster jumps off the track I want to be there with them."   I get it!!  Anyway, we ride the coaster, and run to see our picture.  It was hilarious.  We are all screaming at the top of our lungs.  Our faces are contorted into weird masks, and there is Cathy.  She has absolutely no emotion on her face.  Nothing.  No grimace, smile, not even an eyebrow out of place.  It was the weirdest thing I had ever seen.  The only time I ever saw a face like that was during my psychiatric rotation during nursing school.  She would not let us buy that picture.  Well, that face is hard to do when you are trying, but Kim and I got it pretty good on Space Mountain.  I felt like I had accomplished something.  HAHA!

Enough of where I have been.  Let's get to the recipe.  This is the last recipe I am preparing out of the Calling All Cooks cookbook.  I have yet to pick the next cookbook, but I think it might be one of Paula's.  We shall see.  The recipe is Atlanta Pork Chops and Rice, and it was delicious.  I don't know what Atlanta has to do with it but hey who doesn't love Atlanta??

You will need Pork Chops, celery, tomato sauce, brown sugar, salt, dried basil, and rice.

Brown the chops in a little oil.  That picture looks weird.

Remove the chops, and brown the chopped celery.  I added some onion because the recipe called for tomato sauce with onions, but I could not find this at the old Publix.

Add the remaining ingredients to the pan.

Add the chops, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

I served it with a little broccoli on the side.  Food Police gave it her blessing as long as the rice serving was 1/2 cup!!  AGH!!

Here is the recipe.....

Atlanta Pork Chops and Rice

Calling All Cooks

4 pork chops

2 T vegetable oil

1/4 C chopped celery

2 (8 oz) cans tomato sauce with onions

1 1/2 C water

2 T brown sugar

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp basil

1 C uncooked regular rice

In large skillet brown chops in oil.  Remove and add celery.  Cook lightly.  Drain fat.  Stir in remaining ingredients.  Add chops.  Bring to a boil.  Simmer covered for 30 minutes.  Makes 4 servings.

Now go have a great day................