I've been trying to get our restaurant spending back on track. If you've followed my challenge, you know that I use our savings on groceries/restaurants for special events. Right now I am saving up for a vacation. My tip to you is to find your weakness. I know that I am our family's weakness. If I want to go out to eat, we go out. If I suggest a certain recipe at home, we eat at home. So it's on me to make us stick with it! I got groceries today and loaded us up in hopes that we stick around home for the upcoming four day weekend.
While getting groceries today, I saw really nice looking okra. I love okra, even though I really only use it one way. Gumbo. We fell in love with it when we were living in Louisiana. I play around with the recipe and tonight I used chicken. I have made it with shrimp, fish, chicken, sausage, and a combo of them.
Saute 1 cup each of green pepper, celery, and onion along with two cloves of garlic (chopped or through a press). I like to use olive oil to saute the veggies. Once they are tender, add two 14.5 ounce cans of beef broth, 16 ounces of tomatoes (I used home canned but stewed would be ok too), 1 teaspoon salt, a sprinkle of cayenne pepper, and 1 bay leaf. I used to add 1/2 teaspoon each of oregano and thyme. However, now I use Young Living's essential oils from their Vitality line. You get a huge burst of flavor plus all the benefits of supporting your body's systems. I wanted to use my oils to help boost our immune systems. They are pretty strong so you don't even need a drop of each. I think I dipped three toothpicks into the bottle and then swirled it into the tomatoes before adding it into the pot. I'd start with two and see if you want a third. Bring to a boil, cover, then turn down the heat and let it simmer for 30 minutes. If you are using fish, add that next and let it cook for 10 minutes. I used a rotisserie chicken tonight so it didn't need extra cooking time. Next add chopped okra. The pack of fresh okra that I found was about 12 ounces. I cut the top and the tip off of them, then sliced. If it feels a little harder to cut and you can hear it sounding "crispy", don't use that one. It was allowed to grow too long and will be tough. Ok, so add your sliced okra and let it simmer 5 minutes. Remove your bay leaf. I like to serve the gumbo with rice. My favorite rice is Jasmine. I also sprinkle a little bit of Tony Chachere's gumbo file on top. I don't know what it is about this gumbo recipe, but man, I just love it! So flavorful. Each bite makes me want to say mmmmm. Ha!
Now on to dessert! Seeing as dinner was a little homage to our time living in Louisiana, I figured we could do a little homage to our current home in New York. It's fall in NY and that means one thing: apples! I wanted to kick up apple crisp so that it would not only have more flavor but also give our immune system another boost. I started out with a store bought package of the dry ingredients for the crisp. I softened the butter for it and stirred in 4 drops of Young Living's lemon essential oil and 1 drop of their Cinnamon Bark essential oil. Then mix the butter with the dry ingredients, sprinkle on top of sliced apples and bake. Easy peasy. I think it's fair to say that dessert was a hit. There's hardly any left!
*I can only speak to the safety of ingesting Young Living's essential oils from their Vitality line.
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