Did Somebody Say “Gumbo?”

Allow me to introduce you to my way of preparing finger’lickin’good, Hard Seafood Gumbo. “Hard, did he say?” Yup. It’s a term I use to describe the way I like my seafood gumbo. There are corn-on-the-cob medallions, shrimp tails - deveined, but still in the shells, crabs, crawfish, mussels and/or clams - all in the shells and sometimes chicken drumettes; where you must drag these goodies out of the “mud” with fork or fingers and bite, pry, nibble, crack and suck to get at the scrumptious meats, using your tongue, teeth, fingers and maybe even your elbows to succeed at the task at hand, then use fresh crunchy French bread to sop up that delicious mud. “Oh…Lordy…I’m getting hungry just talking about this. Somebody, please pass the French bread…”

As opposed to “Soft Gumbo,” whereas the little meat pieces are sans the shells and/or bones, allowing one to stick out the pinkie finger and eat the grub with a soup spoon like a true sophisticate…alas…never having the pleasure of sucking the shells or licking the fingers. Tsk…Tsk…Tsk.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve ran across some ultra scrumpdelicious soft gumbos, especially down in New Orleans - the gumbo capitol - and admittedly I learned a lot of the basics of preparing gumbos from Louisiana cooks. But if I had my choice, I’d really rather sit down with a big frosty glass of homemade iced tea or lemonade, a half loaf of crusty French bread or my cool “Sunday Cornbread Pancakes” and a quart-sized bowl of “My Kind’a Seafood Gumbo.”

“Mmmm…mmm…enh!!”