What's For Dinner? 11/11/21

 Hello!

It's Thursday and it is also Veteran's Day.  Please remember those who are serving and those who have served.  Despite our many problems, I feel fortunate to live in the US and am eternally grateful to those who have made it possible.

The kids (that would be Colin & Mailing...not their cats) came over for dinner on Sunday.  It had been so long since they had both been over (they are very busy most weekends) and Mailing hadn't even met Mabel yet!  I decided to make Crawfish Etouffee.  The recipe I use is from Jeff Smith - The Frugal Gourmet (I used to love that show).

The grocery stores around here all carry crawfish, but they have their heads on and their shells.  I can't deal with that.  I used to be able to get a frozen one pound bag of crawfish tail meat that was already cooked at the grocery stores.  No longer.  But...I found that Hill's Seafood carries it!  Woo-Hoo!  Crawfish meat is so rich and good.  Not cheap - roughly $20 per pound, but I bought 2 bags, so I still have a pound in the freezer.  Here is the recipe I use:

CRAWFISH ETOUFFEE

Make a roux with 4 TBS each butter and flour.  Stir it and toast it till a light brown color.  Add to the pot:

• 1 Cup finely chopped yellow onion
• 1 Cup finely chopped green onions
• 1/2 Cup finely chopped celery
• 1 tsp finely chopped garlic
• 2 bell peppers seeded and chopped
• 1 Cup chopped parsley

Cook all that over medium heat till the veggies are soft.  Then add:

• 1 Can (16 oz) tomatoes, drained and chopped (I do not drain them)
• 1 Cup white wine
• 1 Cup Fish Stock (I used veggie broth)
• 1 TBS thyme leves
• 1 TBS worcestershire
• 1/4 tsp Cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp salt
• Tabasco or hot sauce to taste

Simmer all this for about 30 minutes and then stir in the pound of crawfish meat (roughly 2 Cups).

This is what it looks like:

Voila!  Serve this in a bowl over rice.  Delicious!  We had a small tossed salad with greens from the garden to go along with this.  And, as I mentioned on a previous post I made the Cranberry Pie that Bonny blogged about HERE and made whipped cream to go with it.  Yummy!!  My pie plate must have been a little shallow because mine spilled over onto my new oven floor!!  No worries it cleaned up quickly and the pie was so good.

Today I have no plans to go out at all.  Traffic was horrible when I ventured out for my glasses yesterday - it was making me crazy!  And it's Thursday so I've got a number of reports to run this morning and send out.  Meanwhile things seem to be back at square one with Bruce...on Tuesday when we met he "promised" to send me a number of things via email on Wednesday.  I got exactly nothing from him.  Furthermore, he did not respond to any of the emails I sent him about other things.  Oh well...I tried!  I did manage to complete Open Enrollment though, so there is that.

Let's hope today is a good one for all of us!