Good Morning Friends! It’s been a wild week here at AMR art. I completed seven sets of invitations this week, and took orders for three more. Wow! Thanks guys! If you open your package and find your neighbors invitations please send them back so I can make it right…. just kidding! I think!
If you are new here . This is the Friday deal… from my own blog a few months back:
“The main purpose of my blog is to show my art. Since art styles are always evolving {and hopefully improving} I wanted a way to showcase the latest and greatest. I had a website, and though I loved it, it was outdated before I uploaded it. The blog has proven a perfect medium for showing and interacting in the art world right now. However, I can’t help but show you pictures of what is going on with the little people. Call it the doting mother syndrome. So instead of my Friday Photo Bliss I have been posting on Fridays I have decided to dedicate Friday’s posts to family. To get out all the cute things my kids did that week. So here it is – my first “Family Fridays”. I can’t promise I will be consistent with it – I have a bad track record with blog consistency. I will try to keep my family posts to one day of the week.”
I have always tried not to work on Friday’s. Sometimes I have to, but usually Friday around here is for making couch forts and folding laundry. In that tradition, on Friday’s my blog morphs into a regular old “mommy bragging” blog… my favorite kind.
This week it was a balmy, breezy 95 degrees outside {instead of the 120 we have been experiencing}. We played outside for more than ninety seconds…. maybe more like 5 minutes, but outside just the same. I can feel you Fall! Come early… I don’t think any of us in South Alabama would mind.
Yes – I’ll take one….
chubby-cheeked, pouty-mouthed
brown-eyed, diapered-bottom Linus sandwich — Pleeease!
My chubby-cheeked, pouty-mouthed, brown-eyed little love muffin has turned into a total nightmare in public. Shopping cart baby seats, restaurant high chairs…. nope…. we want nothing to do with those! There was a moment this week when I thought he was going to knock over an entire display of wine bottles in Publix. You know because he refuses to sit in the cart. My apologies to any of the mothers I have pre-judged for yelling at their kids in the grocery store, because I was you this week. I think my raised voice was the only thing that saved us from having to purchase 20 bottles of shattered red wine. However, at the end of the day when he is snuggled up to me in his rocker I know why God made toddlers so darn adorable. Just when you think you can’t take anymore you look into their eyes and think… well he IS cute!
***
I must have shrimp on the brain this week.
I have never posted a recipe. I don’t consider myself much of a cook. Between making couch forts, selling art, and keeping the house in somewhat of an order there is rarely time for dinner. Most nights we eat sandwiches or the equal. Every now and then I try something and it usually flops… seriously. This week I tried gumbo. I grew up with a Creole grandmother, not to me confused with a Cajun grandmother. There is a big difference and she will be the first to tell you so. I have sampled every type of gumbo out there… I just know it… from the finest gumbo shops in New Orleans to leftover turkey gumbo. I have decided that Creole Gumbo is a little like Pad Thai in that there is a different recipe for every Southern cook. Most of whom are reluctant to share their recipe either because they don’t want to, or because it’s a little different every time. I didn’t knock it out of the park, but it’s definitely a base hit. I was going to write it down so I would remember how I did it when I thought I would share it.
Ingredients:
- 2 slices of bacon
- 1T vegetable oil
- about 1/4c flour
- 1/2 large onion or 1 whole small onion (chopped)
- 2 ribs celery (chopped)
- 1 clove garlic (smashed and chopped)
- about two handfuls fresh okra (chopped)
- chicken broth
- 1/2 c diced ham
- 1 bs Kelley’s sausage or good sausage equal
- 1/2 lb shrimp ( raw and peeled)
- 1 can crab meat
- 1/2 c cooked rice
- salt and pepper to taste
- Gumbo File
Chop veggies and meat, separate and set aside. In dutch oven brown your bacon (I know, I know, but it add a lot of flavor). Once bacon is brown remove the bacon and leave grease. Add oil and heat. Gradually add flour to make your roux. Once the roux is dark brown and thick add the meat. Brown the meat in the roux. Next, add the vegetables and cook until soft. Add the chicken broth, cover and let cook at least two hours. Add rice and sprinkle with file just before serving.
I put mine on just after lunch, and it was perfect by dinner.
If you have a variation I’d love to hear it!
by Amanda
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