Hello @deeanndmathews,
How I enjoy these excursions you offer into Louisiana folk tradition. You remind me of my mother in a way. Her idea of a birthday gift was to make a culturally significant dish that could not be bought or duplicated anywhere else. Love was in the food.
There is beauty all around in this story. The beauty of the fresh produce. The beauty of shared tradition. The beauty of family. It is a lovely story, but dangerous. It makes us want to eat :)
Wonderful writing.
Thank you ... I thought about the Texans I come from and the Louisianans who were their friends ... and the ones who were my friends that I made after Hurricane Katrina ... and how they used their food as a way of maintaining connection. I also watched these people shift to cooking more vegetables as news about how to stay healthy longer became so much of the California conversation ... so, the Dubois family benefits from all of that. There IS a greens gumbo, as it happens ... I just built it out a bit, just like I take old recipes and tweak them just a bit more ... and, after all, if the Stew of the Colors makes you hungry, you actually can eat as much of it as you want ... the whole point is to plant the idea that YES, healthy food is SUPPOSED to make you hungry, and YES, please indulge, because THIS is the food we need!
🍅 🍆 🍇 🍈 🍉
:)
Five servings ... right on!
:))