I'm not big on cooking, but I do love to make gumbo with the piles of left-over turkey from Thanksgiving. Now gumbo isn't a dish you can just whip up; the basis of a good gumbo is a roux, a mixture of butter or oil and flour, requiring non-stop attention and constant stirring. If you pay attention and don't burn the roux, it deepens over the course of about thirty minutes until it looks like a chocolate sauce rather than what it was. Flour and fat. I don't know who ever thought of roux, but making it for gumbo fascinates me.
I'd rather be outside with my horses than inside cooking any day, and usually by the time evening is coming on I realize that yep, once again I have to whip something up fast to keep my people from protesting. Gumbo is the last thing on my dash-it together list of standards, but there's something that appeals to me about taking the time to build this dish. It's an investment of about two and a half hours: from creating the rich roux, to chopping all the vegetables and andouille sausage, shredding turkey and then simmering for two hours until all the ingredients meld together into something that feels like home, even though gumbo was not a staple of my childhood.
As I stir, Hank William's song 'Jambalaya,' plays in my head. The roux begins to brown and 'jambalaya and a crawfish pie and a file gumbo' is rollicking through my head. Memories of my grandpa and my dad flood my mind as I stir. I learned about music (and country music) from them as a little bitty girl. My grandpa had been a saxophone player and he loved big band music best. My dad loved the old school country classics - Hank Sr., Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette - I loved my dad, so I loved what he loved. Horses and country music. He taught me to dance by letting me stand on his feet and as his feet would move, mine could follow. It's no wonder I associate music with love. I loved my grandpa and I loved my dad and miss them both in an elemental way. Life without them in it feels less bright than it did when they were still in my world.
The kitchen's a total mess - flour on the counter tops and the wall, splatters of roux on the stove, bits of onion and celery and green pepper in my hair and on the floor. Making gumbo is an all-in endeavor. Kind of like life: sometimes messy, but hopefully, it turns out delicious. I'd pulled on an apron, talking about old school. This apron has been in my family for more years than I can figure and it has a name - her name is Big Bertha. I'm pretty sure there have been several permutations of Berthas, but I have one of my own and legend has it that it's the original from my great-grandmother Ruby (I think we all think we have the original Big Bertha, but that's okay). For a person who could care less about cooking, this gumbo-making adventure took up my whole afternoon. To not scorch or burn the roux required focus. Each turn of the spoon felt cathartic and as I watched the color take shape, I felt a satisfaction I hadn't expected to get from watching flour turn brown. I was in the gumbo-zone; utterly in the moment of nudging that mixture into something richer and deeper than each ingredient on its own. Kind of like life: you get a bunch of ingredients and its up to you to turn it into something rich.
Jambalaya is my earliest recollection of a favorite song, when I was just old enough to even have a favorite song. I remembered junior high dances where us country kids would dance our version of country swing, stepping on our too-long Wranglers and shyly figuring out the basics of how to be a good partner. I'm smiling as I coax the roux into the rich base it will provide for the rest of the gumbo to stand on. I think about dancing with the pivotal men in my life - across my lifetime. My grandpa always danced with me as I was his most willing partner, my dad taught me dance steps by letting me step on him, and my husband Pat won my heart as we dated and danced our way to a life together.
I think about what it takes to be a good partner - dance and otherwise - and think about getting to know Pat through learning how to move together. He is a big, reserved guy but he loves to country swing and he's damn good at it. His reserve fell away on the floor as we got to know each other and as he would lead and I would follow. We sometimes still laugh about the guys I'd danced with before him - the guys he would tease me about. The armpit grabber (someone who two-steps with you by shoving your head right up near their underarm, the last place your head wants to be), the overzealous swing dancer who almost dislocated my arm; he's kept a list of them and we laugh and we're both glad that he was the best dancer of them all.
The gumbo is simmering away on the stove as the last rays of light give way to dusk. Daylight savings time has really cramped my riding time and my time with my horses isn't what I'd like it to be. All this gumbo making has brought memories flooding into my heart as I stand over the stove, breathing in the steam of the bubbling pot. I think of horses (all roads lead there in my mind) and how my goal is to be a good dance partner for my mare Satin. I'm glad my gumbo-time has given me food for thought in my partnership with her. I'm grateful for this afternoon immersed in flour and music and memories, and the reminder that dancing (and music, and gumbo, and horses - always horses) is good for your soul and might just find you a lifetime partner like it did me.
