For a mayonnaise sized jar, one tea bag will do. For one of those gigantic jars you get bulk ketchup or pickles in, try four tea bags. While there are fewer jars to clean with one big jar, I’ve often found the 5-gallon jars difficult to fit inside the refrigerator as well as tricky to pour from. Having just come into a small inheritance of 1-L canning jars via Freecycle, I’m giving them a try.

Bring your jars inside to chill in the refrigerator. Once that’s done, you need to add sugar obviously and probably lemon juice too. Fresh lemons sliced and placed in the jar while the tea is cooling is my favorite, but failing that a few drops of concentrate will do. As for an amount of sugar, start at a 1/4 cup and add until it’s at your sweetness level.

There’s even room for experiments! For instance, to enjoy mint from the garden, I clip a fresh sprig and add it with the tea bags at the beginning. The same can be done with any lemon flavored herbs – lemon grass/lemon balm – instead of adding the lemon juice.

You’re so lucky. I learned this precious method after years of back-breaking and arduous study at the right hand of my father in the backyard vegetable garden.

Put shortening in heavy pot – black cast iron being the best – add ground meat, onions, bell pepper, celery and salt and pepper. Cook for 15 minutes. Then add soups, raw rice, parsley and onion tops. Turn into a 2 quart buttered casserole. Cover and bake at 350 for 1 and 1/2 hours.

As a note: My friend had doubled this and it fit nicely in a 9 x 13 baking pan. She also mentioned that she’d cut back a bit on the seasonings for the kiddies.

1 chicken, cut into parts
Chicken stock (optional)
½ can of roux
2 large onions, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 bunch green onions, chopped
1 stalk of celery, chopped
1 lb. plain smoked sausage, sliced into coins
Cajun seasoning
Salt/pepper
Garlic powder
Onion powder

Fill a large soup pot 1/3 full of water and/or chicken stock. Heat to boiling and add roux, stirring constantly for 5 – 10 min until all clumps of roux are completely dissolved. Stop stirring and allow the roux mixture to boil until it is frothing. Once this starts, let it continue for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add chopped sausages and vegetables, holding back a small handful of the green onions. Give it a stir and then season. Let it all come to a boil again, turn the fire down to medium and cook down for 30 minutes. Add chicken, return to boiling, turn fire to medium and cook for 45 minutes until chicken is cooked. As chicken is cooking, skim off any brown imperfections or excess oil and discard.

Keep fire on medium to low heat. Remove and cool chicken, then de-bone the meat and return it to the pot. Taste the gumbo and season again, if necessary. When seasoning is perfect, add in the reserved fresh green onions about ten minutes before serving. Serve over white rice in bowls.

Notes:
Be very sure to purchase plain smoked pork sausage without cheese or Italian herbs. Check the ingredients list if the name is ambiguous. Herbs will wreck the flavor of the gumbo.

A large soup pot means something 6 to 8 quarts in size.

Either homemade or canned chicken stock can be used, but the canned stock might be salty so I would not include salt in the first seasoning. I usually used a half and half combination of water and stock to start the gumbo.

I often used all dark meat to make this gumbo – chicken legs with the back attached – but it is traditionally prepared with the whole chicken. You choose according to your family’s taste. Any combination of parts equal to the weight of one chicken would work.

My dad’s rule of thumb for seasoning was one good sprinkle across the entire surface of the pot. So the first time the recipe says to season – give a good sprinkle of Cajun seasoning and a lighter sprinkle of the salt, pepper, garlic and onion powders as they are all contained in the Cajun seasoning. Once the chicken is cooked and the recipe says to season again, the gumbo usually needs salt and Cajun spice. Mine usually got a bit more of all the other seasonings as well, but it depends on what you give it the first time. It will be a learning process to get your taste buds adjusted to which seasoning is needed, but try to make it taste like mine and when unsure, give a pinch of one thing, let it cook for ten minutes and taste again to see if you got it right. If not, add a different one and repeat the cooking and tasting again. Too, remember that individuals can always add more hot sauce and Cajun seasoning to their own bowls. You do need a certain amount of spice to give the gumbo it’s proper flavor but there’s no need make it very spicy in the pot, especially if you’re serving children.

The brown “imperfections” I mention in the recipe looks like brown goop on the surface. Sometimes there is very little and sometimes there is a ton, but it should come out before serving. Regarding the oil, there should be only a thin layer so remove any more than that.

For about a shoebox full:

1 ½ c peanut butter
1 c butter/margarine
2c powdered sugar
24 oz semi-sweet baking chocolate
¼ box paraffin wax

For about 200:

1 – 500 g jar peanut butter
1 ½ lb. butter/margarine
6 c powdered sugar
72 oz chocolate
1/2 box paraffin wax

Mix and chill 1st three ingredients in refrigerator about two hours until firm. Roll into balls. (If they get too sticky and hard to roll, put remaining batter back in the fridge for half an hour then try again.) Melt chocolate and wax in a double boiler and whisk until smooth. Using a toothpick, pick up each buckeye and dip it in the chocolate, then place on a baking sheet covered in waxed paper. Put entire sheet into freezer. Once frozen, place in cheery Christmas tins or Ziploc bags or whatever you like until Christmas.

Notes:
Use the first proportions if this is your first time, but go for the 200 if you’re a chocolate lover. You won’t regret it. After that first batch, I made the tripled batch a permanent addition to this recipe.

The only tricky part about this recipe is the chocolate – if it’s too hot when you start the dipping process, it will just run off the buckeye and someone will get short changed. Just give it a minute or two to cool, then try again. I set the buckeye and toothpick combo down together and use a new toothpick for the new one until I’ve done about ten, then I start taking the first out and re-using them. That way the chocolate has cooled a bit to allow me to get the toothpick out cleanly. But when you’re doing 200 buckeyes, your chocolate can also get too cold and gloppy and un-dippable. Lightly heat it again until it’s back to the consistency you like.

Oh, and I’ve been told that around holiday time some stores have baking chocolate with wax already in it, though I can’t find it up here. Just be sure to what you are buying. If your chocolate has wax, don’t add more. But if it doesn’t, the little bit of wax added in holds the chocolate on nicely.

We usually have a bit of chocolate leftover, so be prepared. Really, that’s the fun part – we break out the raisins and/or unsalted peanuts and pretzels. The kids can help with this and get a treat out of it, not to mention Mecandes eats the only raisins he’ll touch all year. Funny how chocolate makes anything delectable.

Per 5 lb. of peeled, chopped potatoes:

6 hard-boiled eggs
1 good squirt of mustard
3 very big serving spoons of mayonnaise
Dash of sweet pickle juice
Salt and pepper to taste
Cajun spice to taste

Boil potatoes to fork tenderness, drain and in a large bowl, mash them a little.
Give them a good sprinkle of all three seasonings. Now mash them really well. This is your chance to mix in the seasonings.

Add the mayonnaise and mustard, then stir. Dice eggs into bite-sized or smaller pieces, add and stir again. Taste for salt now. I find it usually needs a bit more salt and bit more Cajun spice. To finish, add 2 big spoonfuls of sweet pickle juice and stir for the last time.

Notes:
My dad never serves his chicken and sausage gumbo without this potato salad. His claim to fame is that he serves the potato salad warm rather than cold. The gumbo is practically done before he starts boiling the potatoes, and he whips it together with the potatoes are still hot.

This might be a good time too to plug our favorite Cajun spice. My kitchen simply isn’t complete without it. Where we’ve found that many brands of Cajun seasoning are way too salty, the Cajunland company seems to get it just right. Our staple is their Cajun seasoning with green onion. Sits right next to the salt and pepper at the table and goes in all my Cajun dishes. One Easter my grandfather mailed me an entire box of it!

Oh, and you have to try this… it’s the very first thing I ever cooked for Mecandes! Tuna fish mixed with mayonnaise on a toasted and buttered bagel, Cajun spice sprinkled over top. He’s never been the same since.

Chop vegetables and slice sausages into coins. Brown sausage in cast iron pot, then remove.

Saute vegetable mixture until transparent then add sausage back with seasoning, beans and a cup or two of water. My dad’s rule for the seasoning is to give the surface a thin film with the cajun spice, just a pinch of cumin, and salt/pepper to your own taste.

Simmer over low-heat for several hours to cook down. Do not allow all of the water to boil away. It is your “gravy,” so be sure to add more if necessary. May remove some beans once very soft to mash and return to the pot. It thickens the “gravy” a bit. Be sure to taste for more seasoning. I find it usually needs more salt/pepper, dash of Cajun spice and garlic powder. Cook the rice now while you let the final seasonings cook in.

Serve over hot white rice once beans are very tender and it has had time to mingle all the tastes. Easily feeds four people.

3 quarts water
1 tablespoon salt
1 – 2 & 1/2 pound fryer chicken, cut up
1 teaspoon salt
1 taspoon pepper
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 cups vegetable oil
1/4 cup bacon drippings

Combine water and salt in a large bowl; add chicken. Cover and chill for 8 hours. Drain chicken and rinse with cold water; pat dry.

Combine salt and pepper; sprinkle half of mixture over chicken.

Combine remaining salt-and-pepper mixture with flour in a zip-top bag. Place 2 pieces of chicken in the bag, seal and shake to coat. Remove chicken to a plate and repeat until all pieces are coated.

Combine oil and bacon drippings in a 12-inch cast-iron skillet; heat to 360 degrees F. Add chicken, a few pieces at a time, skin side down. Cover and cook for 6 minutes. Uncover and cook for 9 minutes.

Turn chicken pieces, cover and cook for 6 minutes. Uncover and cook for 5 to 9 minutes, turning pieces during the last 3 minutes for even browning if necessary. Drain on paper towels and keep warm.

For best results, keep the oil temperature between 300 and 325 degreees F. Substitute 2 cups buttermilk for the saltwater solution, if desired. Serves 4.

Notes:
If this looks a little labor intensive to you, I’m not going to kid ya… it is. My advice – because these are WELL worth the effort – is to simply start cooking an hour ahead. Ours were cooking while we chatted and had yummy Saturday afternoon drinks. Then when Mecandes had to use the telephone, I employed the timer on the microwave to keep track of the minutes and got the kitchen and dishes all cleaned up before supper.

I’d never fried bone-in chicken pieces before. Always before I’d slice up some boneless chicken and fry them in what I now realize was probably way too much oil. This recipe doesn’t take near so much, so is nicer on the budget. Instead of a whole chicken, I opted for a value pack full of drumsticks to make them easier for little fingers to eat. Oh, and I didn’t have time for the saltwater solution, but the chicken was fresh so it didn’t suffer much in toughness.

We have these with yogurt scones and a green salad. Simple perfect food.

2 cups or 1 pint of fresh/frozen strawberries
1 box yellow cake mix
1 tub store-bought vanilla frosting

If using fresh strawberries, be sure to wash, remove stems and any bad areas. If they are large, cut them into bite sized pieces. Maybe consider keeping half a handful to slice for decorating the top later, but not at all necessary.

Grease and flour the bottom of a 9×13 cake pan. Scatter strawberries along the bottom. Mix cake batter according to directions on the box and pour over strawberries. Bake as directed and frost when completely cool.

For cake:
3c flour
2c sugar
1 t salt
1 t baking soda
1 t cinnamon
2c chopped bananas, about 3
3 eggs, beaten
1 ½ c oil
1 ½ t vanilla
1 – 8oz can crush pineapple, do not drain
2c chopped nuts – 1 for batter, 1 for icing

Grease and flour 3 cake pans. Preheat oven to 350.
Combine dry ingredients. Add eggs and oil. Stir until moist. Do not beat.
Stir in vanilla, pineapple, bananas and 1 cup of the pecans.
Bake for 35-40 minutes or until cake tester comes out clean.

For frosting:
1 – 8oz pkg. cream cheese
1 – 16oz box powdered sugar
2 t vanilla
½ c butter

Cream butter and cream cheese. Add sugar and beat until creamy.

Cool cake completely before icing. Sprinkle the remaining chopped pecans between layers of cake and on top.

Notes:
I’ve received many compliments on this cake and always send them my grandmother’s way. I love how it incorporates fruit and makes three beautiful layers. Its white icing made it a nice choice for a baptismal cake when we needed one. And I’ve thought lately if I needed something to make for a bake sale, you can get three single cakes from this one recipe.

We are celebrating with just a few friends over lunch instead of the usual house-about-to-burst-at-the-seams-for-dinner scenario. I’m glad too because the Louisiana trip didn’t leave me with much energy for playing hostess this year. But I’ve been wanting to tell all about the wonderful food we had down south, and having completed the essential gumbo, it suddenly struck me that Mardi Gras is the perfect day to do it!

Every single day of our trip we asked ourselves “What Louisiana specialty do we want to have today?” The answer to that question often determined which way our feet went! Actually, it even chose the highway we took home. Our first stop was Andre’s Cracklins – I’ll let this link do the talking for what those are about. We bought two bags and had to hide one under the seat so we would be able to save it for my grandmother. Delicious, unique… and everyone will be eating them tomorrow back home. I want some, want some!

As it turns out, it wasn’t hard to give up the cracklins after all. Grandma had a chicken and sausage gumbo hot and ready for us when we walked in the door! Now, I’ve never given out my recipe for gumbo, which giving credit where it’s due is actually my dad’s and his dad’s and his dad’s. Love you, love you, love you! If there is one thing to know about the south, it’s that our men like to cook – and they are awesome! So, I would honestly give you any other recipe, but that one is just… well… mine.

To make up for my well-guarded family secret however, I found a special treat for you – a basic chicken and sausage gumbo recipe from a well-known musician of my hometown! It’s probably just as good as mine, but just don’t go tell my Paw, ok?

First there were the local joints to hit…

Ray’s bakery donuts – Sorry Tim Horton’s, but these really are as good as yours, no matter how hard you hit Krispy Kreme.

Ruby’s breakfast café – Though they were disappointingly slow and the food cold – did you hear the “what happened to the world in six years?” in there – the biscuits were still huge and the best!

Mama’s Fried Chicken for crawfish etoufee, fried crawfish and a shrimp poboy

Boudin… oh, even Emeril’s website has a little article about how fantastic the boudin is around home. We’ve made this successfully here, but the bummer is stuffing the casings. If you ever get your hands on some, take my word for it and put it on the barbeque. My crazy Paran came up with this, and it’s brings out all the flavours in boudin like no other heating method.

And we had to be sure to make all of the fast food we can’t find up here…

Popeyes – twice! Fried chicken, biscuits and red beans and rice. Out of this world. Seriously. Luckily, I’d gotten a dose of this while away from home. We just so happened to book a hotel in New York City with a Popeyes right next door! Same street as the Empire State Building. God is too good! But we have seen them in downtown Toronto – I believe behind the Pantages Theater – and also in Markham. But doing a search on their website says they are also in Abbotsford – Rebecca!!! – Brampton, Coquitlam, Etobicoke, Maple Ridge, Mississauga, North York, Oakville, Scarborough, and Willowdale.

Sonic twice too! I had to educate Mecandes on the subject of chili cheese fries, toasted sandwiches, and cherry limeades. The kids enjoyed the hotdogs on a stick! haha

Chick-Fil-A with its waffle fries and yummy sandwiches

So, then there were the trips to Wal-mart that were really excuses to get more candy bars… M’amazing, Snickers with almonds, White chocolate Reese, Butterfinger, Hostess cupcakes

We made the rounds at all the dance hall restaurants, but DI’s is our total favorite. Some boiled crawfish, blackened catfish to perfection, and the next time the best fried catfish ever!

Mulate’s was interesting because of all the business cards on the ceiling and its famous guest list – Patrick Swayze, Meg Ryan, Ron Howard, Bob Dylan, Joe Cocker, Oliver Stone, Huey Lewis and more.

We enjoyed the distinctive and very full of olives muffalutta sandwich in New Orleans while listening to some great jazz.

We did get some beignets from Vermillionville, not to mention that the restaurant there helped make that day pretty much perfect, even including the little bit of rain – it seems we can’t go to any outdoor museum without getting partially wet! But on the buffet for lunch were red beans and rice, gumbo, cornbread, lima beans, and smothered green beans. Mecandes ordered up some fried crawfish and shrimp, and we were all served WARM pecan pie for dessert. Now, I *love* pecan pie, but I had never had it warmed. The first bite was a sizzler on the tongue, but the taste was night and day better over serving it cold. The waiteress confessed that it was her mother’s secret. Yet… she was from Texas!

I hope you get to try these tasty treats one day. For now, have a wonderful Mardi Gras! We all have a big day tomorrow.