Lefty wrote:
> "jmcquown" > wrote in message
> ...
>> Yes, tonight I'm preparing dinner from a boxed mix. Zatarain's
>> Dirty Rice. Not as a side, just for dinner.
>>
>> Now, I normally would prepare this as a side using a recipe given to
>> me by a former co-worker, Mz. Cloutier from Houma, Louisana. But I
>> suspect she just adapted it from Paul Prudhomme's recipe, which I've
>> prepared in the past (excellent!). But that serves about 10 people.
>> I'm one people
>>
>> At any rate, I have no chicken gizzards or livers to grind up to add
>> to this so I'm just using ground beef. I'll tart up the mixture
>> with chicken stock rather than water; I'll add some diced green bell
>> pepper, onion and garlic and a squirt of fresh lemon juice. Alas, I
>> have no celery. I'll taste it and add some hot sauce and maybe even
>> ground sassafrass leaves (file powder) after the rice cooks. File
>> is a thickener as well as a seasoning. This is one quick cooking
>> boxed meal which I adore. And as I said, I eat this as a meal, over
>> a period of a several days or I can freeze the leftovers. For those
>> of you who don't know, cooked rice freezes very well.
>>
>> Jill
>
> I tried the Zatarain's Gumbo. It called for okra --no fresh okra
> around here so I tried some canned okra. Turned out to be pretty
> gross --the canned okra tasted unpleasant and ruined the rest.
> They're probably tasty with a little fixin' up -- a little hog jowls
> and poke salad on the side :-)
>
> Life is for learning
> The worst I ever had was wonderful

Canned okra is nasty, slimy stuff. Frozen, not canned okra, if you must use
it and can't be bothered with fresh. The fresh pods aren't hard to slice
and dice but are sometimes hard to pick out as 'good'. Still, no okra
called for in this.

Jill