Cookin' with Junior...

Apart from Tennessee losing to Florida, we had a pretty good weekend.

I had some time on my hands, so I decided to do some cooking. I love to cook and, though I am not always great at it, I will say that my recent experiments turned out better than I had hoped.

I had found what sounded like a good Gumbo recipe at Junior's Juke Joint.

This is a great site - primarily about the blues, reason enough to recommend it - but he also tells a mean story (if you're not easily embarrassed or offended) .

Fair warning.

Then there's his recipes. They all looked good but I decided on the gumbo. I've tried several gumbo recipes in the past - all were OK but none I've made fully met my expectations.

until now...

I started with the basics: fresh okra, bell peppers, celery, garlic, onions, home-canned tomatoes, and about a pound and a half each of deboned white chicken meat and ham hocks:

I cooked the vegetables down in some butter...

And about an hour later they looked like this:

I dumped this, along with the meat, into the broth and cooked it for another couple of hours.
Oh, I almost forgot the most important part: Blair's Death Sauce!

Here's the result:

It looks like hell but tastes like heaven!