Dirty Rice

Happy Sunday to you!

I decided that I’m going to keep fresh flowers around the house now. TJ’s has a great value on flowers, and the last $5 bouquet I bought lasted almost 2 weeks! Definitely worth the cheerfulness it adds to the house. This bunch even has some closed blooms, so we’ll have a surprise to enjoy later in the week.

We had early dinner today (as per the norm on Sundays) and so I wanted to show you the soul food we enjoyed today. We’ve been in a Cajun mood lately and so I decided to tackle dirty rice!

If you’re not familiar with it, dirty rice is basically very seasoned rice that’s really common in Cajun cuisine. The seasonings turn white rice a brownish color, hence the name “dirty”. The traditional version is spicy and involves a lot of interesting ingredients. I didn’t want to make mine with some of the traditional ingredients like chicken livers and pork, so I kind of made my own spin on it. It’s all about the spices!

I used brown basmati and made the dirty rice vegetarian. Then I made some crockpot cajun beans to go with it and in those I used turkey kielbasa from Trader Joe’s for that smoky, meaty flavor. It’s good stuff and very low in fat!

I used Emeril’s recipe (loosely) for the rice and it was very flavorful!

Along with the dirty rice and beans we had some blackened cod. Definitely a filling and fully spiced meal!

I’m going to try to make the absolute most of this last bit of weekend we have left.  A movie and a warm drink sounds really good right now…

Thanks for reading!

-Lauren

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