My Grandmothers Shrimp/Crawfish Etouffee'

I distinctly remember winter days in my grandmothers house. I would walk into the house from the freezing cold outside to be blasted with warmth and the smell of rich, rich stew simmering away on the stove and the clinks of the metal soup ladle being hit on the pot as she stirred the stew while a football game played on the tv in the background. We would greet her with a big "heeeeeey" and she'd yell it right back from the kitchen. I don't remember ever walking into that house and not smelling something delicious that would make me hungry even if i had just eaten! Growing up, winter was like a magical time for me. Some of the things i remember are:

-the frost shining on the bushes outside my window when i woke in the morning

-the smell of breakfast coming through the heating vent in the floor by my bed

-the "smoking effect" when i exhaled waiting for the school bus bundled in 3 layers of cloths

-the quiet stillness of very early morning and looking through the forest waiting for the wolf in my dreams to jump out and grab me

-the smell of burning leaves on winter afternoons when my grandfather cleaned the acres of land behind his home and the sound of his tractor at full speed coming back towards the house so my grandmother could hand him his steaming cup of coffee

-the Christmas lights hanging from the traffic lights on the main street of our town,every year i would get so excited to see them

-playing with my cousin in the forest behind my grandfathers house in our "camp" that my father made out of a huge sheet of plastic connected to 2 trees

-watching my grandfather fall asleep in his lazyboy after lunch, he would still rock back and forth while asleep and we thought it was magic, but, now that we are older, we understand that he wasn't really sleeping, but, he was watching us, watch him :)

-sleeping snuggled to my grandmother on VERY cold nights, stuck like glue to her arm while she told me stories about when she was little and sang to me


I could go on and on, I think I am very lucky to have had such a memorable childhood filled with such beautiful memories...I don't know, but when we grow up, I feel we lose that imaginative magical sense of things, but sometimes, I get a piece of it back, and it really overwhelms me, i just want to jump back into 1986 and stay there...

So, the point of this was to introduce my grandmothers recipe for Crawfish/Shrimp Etouffee and let you experience, through words and taste, a piece of my childhood...

Melba's Recipe for Crawfish/Shrimp Etouffee'

1 stick margarine

1 large onion chopped

green onions chopped

1 medium bell pepper

3 cloves garlic chopped

1 lb crawfish or shrimp

1 can of a quality mushroom soup

season to taste...you may add rotel tomatoes

Saute margarine,onions,bell pepper and garlic. Add soup and cook together for a while(low fire). Add crawfish or shrimp. Cook just until crawfish or shrimp are tender. Serve with white rice.