Not so much Mom, but Granny's Red Beans and Rice. Before she started cutting corners to eat healthier, she always kept a tall coffee mug full of bacon drippings on the stove. One of the tricks was to saute the fresh cut seasoning in some bacon grease. She used to fry up some bacon, give me the bacon to snack on, and then proceed to saute the seasoning. The entire skillet went into the pot, drippings and all. Talk about good. The hamhock didn't hurt either. Those were the best Mondays all summer.
my mom cant really cook at all, and my late granny was even worse. she used to force me to eat some sort of rice concoction called perlo or perloo or something, which was really a nightmare. my mom is lazy and isnt really into cooking things for children.
martin, I'm sure your mom is a wonderful person...but.... That's one of the saddest stories I've heard in a long time...
My Mom was one great cajun cook! She's 86, and doesn't cook anymore. She made a wicked crawfish bisque, took 3 days. She bought the crawfish, boiled them, peeled them, kept the heads, cleaned them with a brush, stuffed em, and then went after the sauce stuff. But my all time favorite was her shrimp okra gumbo!!! She cooked the best okra I ever ate, NEVER SLIMEY. She cut the okra into little rings, in a big black skillet with a little oil. She smothered it, added some diced tomatoes, salt, pepper, onions. It started to slime, and she kept cooking and stirring till all the slime was gone. She put it up in plastic containers in the deep freezer, and pulled in out for all sorts of dishes. She bought okra by the burlap sack full, and my sister and I cut it while mom cooked. We never had ANY slime in our okra. When added to a great shrimp gumbo in the winter, we always went to bed HAPPY. We lived in the country between Lafayette and Opelousas, and she knew farmers where we'd buy stuff by the burlap sack. I shucked a lotta corn, and shelled so many peas I don't want to think about it. Heck, just put on the radio and go after it with sis. Good memories. Mom always said we didn't have much money, but we ate as well as the richest kings, and she was right.
Wow, my grandmother did the same thing the same way. She's in her late 80's and lives in a nursing home near where I live. My grandmother's from Ville Platte and didn't learn English until she was a young adult. Everything she ever cooked that was ridiculously good. She even made a flour gravy for biscuits that was awesome.
it's funny, when you say tomato gravy up here people look at you like you're crazy......not that there's anything wrong with that.
