Crawfish and Sausage Soup

 

This is the recipe for the soup Ben loves - we made it for the first time way back in 2010.  I was in the kitchen trying to figure out something to make for supper (hmm...is there a theme here?) and Ben was 'helping' me.  So, we literally started throwing things in a pot, and this is what we came up with!  The measurements are approximate - it's basically a dump-it-in-to-taste recipe.

 Crawfish & Sausage Soup
  
Medium-dark roux, using 1/2 of a stick of butter and 1/3 cup of flour

1 lb  Cajun Smoked Sausage, sliced
1 package crawfish tails, rinsed
1/2 medium onion, chopped
2 bay leaves
1 can chicken broth
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 T dried parsley
salt and pepper to taste
Pasta of your choice, cooked
Louisiana Hot sauce, optional *

Make a medium-dark roux;  when done, add onions to roux and cook over medium heat till done.  Transfer to a medium sized stock pot.  Add sliced sausage, chicken broth, bay leaves and parsley.  Bring to a boil.  Add cream of mushroom soup, whisk to combine.  Add crawfish tails and cooked pasta, season with salt and pepper.  Heat through, remove bay leaves and serve immediately. 


*The sausage has a bit of heat to it, but if you want to add hot sauce, go for it.  Because I made it with Ben in mind, I didn't add the hot sauce.





 

Choices

On the way to school this morning, I asked Ben if he wanted anything special for supper tonight. (yeah, it's sad that I have to get supper ideas from an 8 year old...)

Well, I'll give you three guesses as to what his first idea was.  It starts with a p and ends
with an a.  Has izz in the middle....

I tell ya, at 7:45 am (that was really 6:45, due to the whole Spring Forward event of the weekend)  pizza was not high up there on my list of ideas for supper. 

So, I tried to talk him out of that - I crinkled my nose and said how about something else? 

     How about my Honey Chicken?   "Nah."

     Chicken and Sausage Gumbo?  "Nah."

He thought for a second and said, "Shish kabobs?  Without.....?"   (*)

     Without what, bud?

"Without the vegetables.  Just the steak and onions?"

     Um, I'm not sure I have any steak, but if I do, yeah, I guess we could have that. 

He was quiet for a minute and then said, "Hey! What about that crawfish and sausage soup?  That's my most favorite food ever that you make!  Could you go to the store and get some crawfish and make that?"

     Really? That's your favorite?  Um, sure.  I could do that. 

"AWEsome!  I love you, Mom!!"   Kiss!!  :)

So, I guess I'll be making a trip into town for crawfish.  Nah, he's not spoiled at all.






*We have a friend who has introduced Ben to the wonders of Mediterranean food - he thinks Mr. Sam is cool, so he's tried several new things and, lo and behold!  he likes it!!!    In fact, he was walking around the house the other day, saying, "Baba ganoush!" 
But even Mr. Sam can't get Ben to eat vegetables - cool as he is.

 

yo quiero taco mio!!

 

Every afternoon, on our way home from school I typically ask Ben a few things - how his day went, whadja' eat for lunch, any problems at school, etc.   Tuesday afternoon was no different as we drove the short distance home....lunch consisted of pb&j, his day went 'fine', and no, there were no problems.  Then:

me: Want anything special for supper?
him:   Can we have tacos?
me:  Sure!  I have taco stuff! 
him:  Can we have tacos tonight and spaghetti tomorrow night? 
me:  Sure,  no problem!

We get home, argue over homework for way too long, and then I piddle around a little til it's time for me to start supper.  Fast forward 30-45 minutes or so, the Daddy walks in the door from work.  Ben comes in from the living room - where he's been glued to the tv - to greet his Daddy.  As he's walking around the bar into the kitchen, he asks me if the tacos are ready. 

Crickets.

Tacos?!

Ah!  Oh no!  Giggle!

I made spaghetti!!! 

Somehow, when I opened the pantry door to get out the taco kit, I must have had spaghetti on the brain and pulled that out instead!  It nevereverever even occurred to me as I was up to my elbows in noodles and sauce that I was making the wrong meal! 
All was forgiven, though, as long as I promised we could have tacos tomorrow night - Wednesday.

Now, normally we try to eat Wednesday night supper at church - it's always good, it's cheap, and easy on the Mama - but yesterday the meal they had planned was something that I knew Ben would not eat, so I intended to go home and make the promised tacos.  Wednesday afternoon riding home from school same routine - same answers too, now that I think about it......anyway......

We get home a little later than I had intended when I made the plan/promise to make tacos for him, so I asked him would it be ok if we skip the tacos (again!) and maybe have some hot dogs?  He laughed and said, sure.  (why yes, I'm catering to a 7 year old.....what?)  So, hot dogs it was! 

And another promise for tacos 'tomorrow night'. 

This morning I was reminded of my taco promise.   My baby wants tacos!! 




Just got a call from the Daddy.  Looks like we're gonna have to skip the tacos again tonight.....







Who wants to break the news to the little man?

silly tiger

A couple of weeks ago, the little man had a project to do for school.  This particular project was assigned by the Media Specialist.....um, for those who went to school (like me) prior to the super-secret-renaming of faculty-event,  that would be the Librarian.  Now, why and when the name changed, I don't know.  Remember we're late to this parenting a school-aged child thing.  Anyway....

So, this project was a research paper of sorts.  The librarian, oops,  media specialist (!) helped him research his subject:  tigers.  She had helped him write out several key points and then sent the information home for him to use to write his paper.   As we sat going through the information together, well....somewhat together....SOMEone wasn't too thrilled to be sitting at the table doing homework, when, quite possibly he might be missing his very favorite show that he's seen a thousand times and  ohmygoodness! I-just-can't-sit-here-any-longer-Mama-because-I'm-soooooo-tiiiiirrrrredddd-and-do-we-have-to-do-this-noooooowww?????

Around this time, the Daddy came in to save the day; my glaring and threatening of bodily harm obviously wasn't working.  He sat down at the table, reviewed the instructions for the paper and we all worked on it together. We had a pretty good system:  Ben would read the information, we'd discuss it and then we'd decide if it needed to be included in the report.   It only needed to be three paragraphs, so it wasn't all that detailed.  Our paragraphs were to include what tigers eat,  where do tigers live, and how many cubs do tigers usually have.  To make sure the finished product was as neat as could be, Ben dictated the information  - in his words -  to me,  as I wrote it onto a separate piece of paper.  

We'd finally finished gathering the information, so he started to transfer the information over in his handwriting.  Roles were reversed: I dictated, he wrote.   I allowed him to have some freedom with his spelling,  that is, unless he was really off on a particular word - I allowed a fair amount of mistakes,  planning to come back at the completion of the paper to make corrections.  

Minutes pass.  Time to proof-read and correct mistakes; more groaning and whining ensue.  Ok, so maybe it wasn't such a good idea to let him write everything out and then expect him to correct his mistakes afterward.  Whatever.

At the point in the paper covering what tigers eat, I observed the following portion of a sentence, as written by Ben:

   ".....a tigers diet can include beer, badgers, rabbits...." 

As I'm reading the sentence aloud to him,  I say,

     "...a tigers diet can include beer and pretzels...."  

By now, he's sitting on my lap, so he snapped his head around, giving me a surprised look  and tells me that's not what it says!  
I picked up the paper to peer at it closely and said,  "Oh! Just beer!  Ok, I see.  A tigers diet can include beer.  Hmm.  I didn't know that."

It takes a few minutes of giggling and me forcing him to re-read his sentence for him to see that he'd written beer instead of deer.    

Yes, we corrected it. 


Even though I do know a few Tigers whose diets consist of beer and pretzels.  Just sayin'.

Maxine's Mystic Revelers*

Good Monday Morning!  Spent the weekend on the Gulf Coast for what has become our family's annual Mardi Gras trip - and boy, we were paraded out by the time Sunday rolled around!  It's so nice to get together with the extended family for a time - lots of laughter, food, and definitely noise!  We are one loud group!  Just ask the neighbors!  Ahem.

Brought home bags full (literally) of cheap Mardi Gras stuff - beads, stuffed animals, plastic crabs, candy, Moon Pies, cups, dubloons, etc etc.   The little man wanted to take some beads to his classmates this morning, so I counted out 40 strands of the multicolored beads, explained to him that he would be able to give each friend 2 strands and that he needed to make sure it would be ok with his teacher before he started passing them around.  I sent a note with him, addressed to her, regarding the beads.  I hope he's able to give them out without causing too much of a ruckus in the classroom.  I threatened told him absolutely no throwing of beads in the classroom!!!  
I hope he listened. 

Happy Mardi Gras, everybody! 



*MMR - our 'Offical' Krewe name.  :)

Top this, 5-star restaurant!

Last night's supper was basically a 'Fend for Yourself' affair.  Leftovers, check: just heat 'em up yourself.  Well, except for Ben - even though he makes a mean scrambled egg (with supervision!) I didn't force him to fix his own supper...I'm not that bad of a mom!  Sheesh!
As I'd had a cup of coffee late in the afternoon that sort of took my appetite away, I didn't eat, thinking I'd just grab something a little later. ha

Probably an hour or so later, as we were sitting at the kitchen table working on spelling words, math problems and sight words, I decided to finally fix myself something to eat.  But, before I could throw anything together, something else came up and the opportunity for me to eat was lost.

More time passed.

Even later, at Ben's urging, we trudged outside to listen to the night sounds on the back porch - we had lots of rain this weekend; happy frogs make lots of noise!  After we'd oohed and ahhed over the frog songs, The Daddy said sweetly, "I have an idea! Why don't you go make us some chocolate chip cookies, Mama?" 
To which, The Son jumped up and down saying, "YES!  Cookies! Mama!? Make some cookies!?!"
I answered, "Um. I don't think so. I still haven't had supper.  Remember?  And besides, it's after 8.  No cookies tonight."   As I laughed maniacally and shuffled off into the dark woods...
The Daddy agreed, saying he didn't realize it was that late.  Well, not five seconds after that, Ben jumped up to go inside.  I peeked in on him to see what was so important that he had to run inside, only to find him in the kitchen - obviously up to something.  So, we waited.

A few minutes later, my baby boy walked outside with a little plate.  On that little plate was a sandwich and one of his snack bags of pre-cut apples with grapes.  He'd made my supper!   The sandwich?  Grape jelly and apricot preserves.  He said he'd looked for the peanut butter in the cupboard but couldn't find it, so he just used apricot preserves instead. 
After a quick hug, he rushed back inside to make me something to drink (and so Daddy could show him where the PB was).  He returned with my drink (and the PB) and stood there,  just beaming.

I lost it.

My sweet baby made my supper!

Daddy had to explain that Mom's tears were happy tears.  I told him it was the best sandwich I'd ever, ever had.  And it was. 

I love him. 



ps - this morning, as I helped him out of the shower, he said, "you're welcome for the supper last night" and gave me a warm, wet hug. 

love

Had a great weekend with both sides of the family for Mother's Day.  Spent Sunday morning at church with Nanny and Pop,  then went to eat lunch with Granny at her assisted living facility, or her "house" according to Ben.   After we stuffed ourselves on good, old-fashioned Southern cookin', we went down to the river to celebrate with my Mama. (where we had the opportunity, again, to stuff ourselves - I think we were pretty good, though.  I only had strawberry shortcake, little man had 2 more deviled eggs....adding to the 4 he had at our first lunch) 

It was really a beautiful, if not a little chilly, day.  We had a fire in the fire pit where we roasted marshmallows and made s'mores.  Man!  They're sweeter than I remembered from when I was a kid.  (Oh yeah, I had s'mores too; guess I didn't do as well as I'd thought) 

Our brother-in-law J brought his and the boys' kayaks.  My little daredevil decided he'd like to try to kayak, too.  So his Daddy snapped him in a life vest and helped him in his cousin's kayak.  J taught him how to hold the paddle and off they went!  This child knows no fear!  He had a big smile on his face the entire time he was in the water....

We all got a little tickled when he got a bit too close to the pier across the inlet from my Aunt's place - bless his heart, he couldn't figure which way to paddle, so he pretty much crashed (gently) into the pier.  Then, he couldn't quite figure out how to get out of his predicament, ie: how to "back it up".   Uncle J came to the rescue though, then he was off again. 

We left around 6 pm or so to head home.  We weren't in the truck for 20-25 minutes when I looked in the back seat and the little guy was out cold;  and yes, he then slept the entire trip.  When we got home, his daddy carried him in the house and as we were walking, we asked him about his day and told him how proud we were of his kayaking 'abilities'. 
His daddy said, "Boy, you can do anything, can't ya?"
Ben replied, "No.  I can't do a back flip." 

LOL!  I guess everything else is a breeze, but those back flips - can't do 'em!!


________________________________________________________
My Mother's day was wonderful, too.  I got a lovely card and some sweet-smelling lotion, shower gel and body spray from my little man (and his daddy).  I also got hand-made cards and goodies that he made at school.   My favorite gift of all?  My baby climbing into bed with me Sunday morning, a sweet smile, and a whispered, "Good morning, Mama".  Complete with hug and kiss.


I love being mama to this sweet, sweet boy.

lunch date

Just had a pb&j with the little man.

I finished mine in record-time...only coffee for breakfast, so I was starving.

Little man wanted cheese puffs with his. ewww.

He ate his in typical little-boy fashion - straight down the middle of the sandwich. So when he brought me his paper plate telling me he was finished, I glanced at his face and on both sides of his mouth right up to his cheeks, was peanut butter. Kinda like a peanut butter smiley face.
When I told him he had peanut butter all over his face, he used the God-given 'napkin' attached at his shoulders - his arm. Now, he has peanut butter on his face, his ear, and his forearm.

Oh, and the cheese puffs died a horrible, peanut butter asphyxiation-death.....inside his sandwich.

R.I.P. cheese puffs.

Brownies ARE good for you, aren't they?

"mommy, can we make the brownies?"

"hey, mom....I thought you said we could make the brownies tonight..."

"after my nap, can we make the brownies?"

Ok. So there's been a box of brownies in the cupboard driving my son nuts. True, I've promised to 'help' him make them for two or three days now....but something always comes up. Like bedtime last night. Oh, yeah. It was obviously not a good enough reason for him, but it was way too late to make brownies. So, I promised him we would make them today.

Approximately 15 minutes ago, I asked him if he wanted to go make the brownies now. Yippee! Yay!! Brownies!!! Off to the kitchen we go. Maybe 30 seconds after we get the mix, eggs, water, and oil in the bowl - he's uninterested. Off he goes to watch Power Rangers but not before yelling over his shoulder "I want to lick the bowl!!"

Batter in the pan, pan goes in the oven and I've stolen a couple of licks of the spoon before I call him in (what? yeah, like you don't do it too...) the kitchen. He comes running in smiling, saying: "lick the bowl, lick the bowl!"

I've already scraped the sides of the bowl down to make it easier for him; hand him the spoon and he says: "I don't want it. I don't want to eat junk food".

Whaaaaa?

Sharing with Daddy

Went to eat at a local restaurant after church last Sunday with my two favorite guys. After eating yeast rolls hot out of the oven with (way too much) butter; we continued to see just how fast we could get our arteries to slam shut by ordering roast beef sandwiches loaded with melted swiss cheese, tiny thin-crispy onion rings with a 'tangy' Cajun horseradish sauce - all on toasted ciabatta bread, with - of course - au jus. Ahh.
I felt the best thing to round out this infarct-arousing lunch for me would be fries. The sweetest hubby thought an order of onion rings would do the trick.
(I guess onion rings on the sandwich wouldn't be enough....)

Little man's lunch wasn't much better. He got mini-corndogs and cheetos. At least the cheetos were baked. I'm not that bad of a mom.

The sweetest hubby had to share his onion rings with the little man. After trying to bite through one particularly tough onion ring, little man pulled the whole onion out of his mouth and handed it to his daddy - keeping the other, yummy part.....

"Here, Daddy. You can have the onion. I'll eat the ring".

Never knew what to call the coating on an onion ring till now.