The day after

There was a lot to be thankful for yesterday and I shared it with some special people. I decided to stay home and enjoy my alone time cooking for myself. I tried a few things I hadn’t done in a long time and a few new takes on familiar dishes. I made potato salad using canned potatoes. The dish came out okay, and its less time consuming, but one of the joys of cooking is the boiling of the potatoes, touching the hot skin as you try to peel the potatoes before they get too cold. The other thing I hadn’t done in a while was to make corn bread. I was never a big cornbread eater, but on occasion… I made it in a larger pan than what the box called for which made the batter thin out. This made it only rise a little and when I cut it into square it looked like little cookies. It as quite tasty if I must say so myself.
The gumbo was the highlight of the day. I’ve now learned to master this both from scratch and using the box. I’m good at doctoring things up and making them my own with added touches. I always found the box gumbo to be too thick so I add more water and I add lots of shrimp and sausage. My mother used to make a file gumbo which you don’t find in many restaurants or homes in the south. File gumbo was more of a creole dish and most of the cooking that I do was handed down from my mother and grandmother. I’m not a fan of cajun cooking because they put so many foreign ingredients in their foods. I like to know what’s swimming around in the bottom of the pot. There are many dishes that traumatized me as a kid and it took a very long time for me to eat them when I got older. One such dish was cawan or turtle. The first time I ever had turtle soup was at Delmonico’s on St. Charles Ave in NOLA. It was a company function and I decided to give it a try. Anyway, the reason the dish was so traumatic is because my family used to cook the large turtles in a large pot. Their heads would be chopped off, but they would still be alive. They would try to claw their way out of the pot. Just the sound of the claws against the side of the pot were enough to scare a young kid to death. My grandmother would comfort me in the front room until finally they were ready to be prepared for dinner. Luckily this only happened during one of the holidays, either Christmas or Thanksgiving or some other big winter family gathering. Another dish was cubean, which was a large piece of fish cooked whole which included eyes and all. The piece of fish usually measured at least 2 feet in length and was place on a platter in the center of the table. The fix was lavishly decorated with many garnishes including lemon slices. As long as I didn’t have to look at the fish looking back at me I was okay with that. During those days we sat at the children’s table so I didn’t have to look at the fish while I was eating.
I am thankful for all the wonderful people that have come into my life and those that remain to this day. I appreciate all that you have done. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
Time to get back to reality.
Thanks for stopping by; keep an open mind. What is meant to be…