Mumbo Gumbo

Mumbo Gumbo

After living with and visiting so many friends who are awesome cooks, (Bryian and Barb), I have gotten spoiled with my eating habits. Unfortunately I've not focused any real energy to learn to seriously cook since most of the time I'm either too busy to cook for myself or the meal is for a small group so I'm not just cooking for one.

When I am attempting to feed several people at a sitting or one person for several sittings, I find myself drawn to the stews and other concoctions that we invented while living in Athens.

One time this past winter, I wanted to make some stew to munch on for a while. I had a bunch of canned vegetables in my pantry so I started to brew up something which became known as "Mumbo Gumbo".

It was almost literally, one can of everything in my pantry plus some smoked sausage and a pair of left-over chicken breasts. The process was simple and the results were very yummy.

Ingredients:

1 can of whole kernel corn
1 can of kidney beans, light red
1 can of cooked potatoes
1 can of green beans
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 link of smoked sausage
2 cans of tomato sauce
1 package of chili seasonings (optional)
2 cooked chicken breasts, cubed (optional)

Process:

1. Fire up your stove and find your biggest stew pot.
2. Begin opening all of the cans
3. Fight off the cats who think you're going to give them cat food.
4. Continue opening all of the cans
5. Continue fighting off the cats
6. Empty all of the canned goods into the stew pot and bring to a bubble.
7. Add in the sausage which you can cut either thick or thin depending on how you want the stew to look. I like the appearance of a stew with nice big chunks so I leave them about half an inch thick.
8. Stir in whatever spices and additional flavors that you would like and wait for it to come to a bubble a second time and pull it off the heat and allow to cool.
9. Continue to fight off the cats.
10. Allow the stew to cool down. The stew is best if the sauce has been allowed to thicken slightly. Like every other stew, it's always better the second day.

Serve with bread, crackers or whatever you happen to have in the pantry.

Grr... now I'm hungry.
-T