Just One of Those Days!

It was a Chicken-Sausage-Shrimp-Gumbo-kind-of-day...but before getting to the pictured stage there is a not-so-fun story...or two! Woody went to the store this morning to do our weekly shopping.  While he was gone I began preparing the ingredients for the gumbo...chopping celery, onion, peppers, etc.  I couldn't go too far till he got home because he was getting a couple of ingredients that I lacked for the recipe.  This is the recipe that I chose to finish up the pulled barbecue chicken that we had for one of our Christmas dinner meat choices.  I had hoped to be able to do the dish that I plan to make with the leftover pulled pork (enchiladas)...but due to the happenings of the morning after Woody got back home...the enchilada making was put off for another day!  I decided that I wanted to make a real roux for today's gumbo...I usually make one that eliminates the fat...just browning the flour and then making the roux with chicken broth.  But today I decided that I wanted to make the "real thing."  That meant getting out our iron dutch oven which is waaaaaaaaaaaay back in one of the bottom cabinets.  I moved some things out of the way and reached way back and was pulling it out and it got caught on some other pans.  I tried to move them some so it could slide by...but didn't move them far enough and they all came tumbling out of the cabinet...wouldn't have been a "disaster" except that some of those pans have glass lids and one of the lids shattered when its pan hit the floor...so glass in all the pans (not the iron dutch oven since it was still on the shelf when all this happened) and all over the kitchen floor. It was safety glass...so broke into "pebbles" but still a mess!  Woody got me the vacuum and I sat where I was and attempted to vacuum up as much as possible...then I had to get the pots and pans off the floor.  I rinsed all of them out and put them in the drainer at the sink.  Then I vacuumed the whole kitchen floor.  At that point the vacuum was still picking up quite a bit of glass.  And, then I mopped the kitchen floor.  Finally I was ready to get back to my cooking!  It was time to make the roux...which gets very hot when it cooks and I was being very careful to use long handled utensils to stir the roux.  I hadn't found exactly the right one to stir with and was trying out several to see which I liked best.  Well...unbeknownst to me one of those utensils couldn't take extreme heat...but I didn't find out till I realized that black pieces that weren't pieces that had browned on the bottom of the pan started floating around in the roux and the celery, onion, pepper.  Oops...that utensil couldn't take the heat and now there were pieces of it in with the roux, celery, onion, and peppers...so got it off the stove and plopped it into another pan so it could cool enough to be able to throw it away and...I was back at square one!  I wiped out the iron dutch oven and got it ready for the oil and flour (had just enough flour to make this a second time!) and eventually the onion, celery, and pepper pieces...that is after I had to chop two cups of each of those veggies again!  I got all that done and had to go sit with the heating pad on my back for a while before I could go back to the constant stirring that it takes to make the roux.  This time all went well (I used my long handled metal spoon so no more melting!) and from then on each step followed according to the recipe and we actually had Chicken, Sausage, and Shrimp Gumbo along with brown rice ready in time for our supper this evening.  Of course I started something like 10 this morning...so a long day of cooking for me.  But in the end the delicious flavor made it worth all the disasters...I "think!"   And, you would never recognize that one of the main ingredients started out being barbecue chicken.  Fun to have a totally different dish with the leftovers!  I'm really looking forward to enchiladas with some of the pulled pork leftovers...at least I hope that I don't have problems like I did with the gumbo!  Oh, and the gumbo used another leftover, too--the V-8 juice that I used when making the homemade Texas Barbecue Sauce for the beef brisket.  This gumbo was a new recipe (not our tried and true gumbo recipe), but I decided that it was "meant to be" when it called for the V-8.  This is a more tomato based gumbo than the one that I usually make.

I will end with a couple of pictures of the newest additions to our neighbors' (Nathan and Kathy's) family--Georgia and Peaches.  They seem to be adjusting well to their new home.  They had a fun time playing in the sun this afternoon and I slipped away from my cooking long enough to snap a couple of pictures.  Esther is holding Georgia and as I snapped this picture Esther told me that Georgia was purring and that Georgia liked to purr!  Esther is quite the protective mommy...trying to keep them out of trouble.  Georgia is the cat that Esther picked when she thought that she was only getting one.  Peaches, the adventurous one, is Georgia's sister and Esther couldn't stand the idea of separating the sisters!  I imagine that the kitties are much happier to have each other when it comes to time spent without the children playing with them.  They like to snuggle in their nice warm kitty house.