Mumbo, jumbo & gumbo.

It is not enjoyable to try getting back into the swing of a work week post-three day weekend.  I love long weekends starting Friday afternoons when you feel like you have a year of free time ahead of you-- you can sleep in, run errands, go out to eat, drink extra wine... and all on Sunday!  Because you have a full day of freedom left when you wake up!

Fast forward to Monday evening, and I swear it feels the way the night before school started post-summer when I was in elementary school (and high school... and college), that overall feeling of "But I don't WANNA go..." And maybe it's just me, but when I don't work on Monday, my entire week is thrown off.  I don't know which day it is, what's on my calendar, what's on TV for that evening... and when casual Friday is.  On four day work weeks I am almost always guaranteed to try and put on jeans on Thursday morning.

Suffice it to say, it took a gallon of coffee to get me through yesterday and I was exhausted when we finally made it home.  I'm trying to make my evenings more organized though, so the minute we walked in the door we started supper.  Chicken sausage with peppers and onions on couscous was originally on the menu, but Boston is experiencing a cold snap and as I sat at my desk yesterday, shivering with numb toesies, only one comforting food flashed through my mind: GUMBO.  

Have I ever made gumbo?  No.  Is it the healthiest food in the world?  Judging by Emeril's recipe, BAM! it is not.  Am I on Weight Watchers and really in need of consistently healthy, balanced suppers?  Yep.  However, a lovely blogger whom I follow on Instagram posted a picture of her mama's homemade gumbo over the weekend and it was that kind of moment where I knew that I needed to make gumbo happen.  Brian, trooper that he is, stopped by the store on his way home and picked up the few essentials that I had decided I needed based on the four recipes that I had combined from Cooking Light, Eating Well, and two healthy living blogs.  A Weight Watchin' girl has to get creative!

So I start chopping and slicing and simmering and basically feeling all excited and created because I'm making a new recipe!  That I kind of created!  Kind of... Around this point I realize that I do not have onion, the celery we do have is looking a little limp, and Brian couldn't find okra at the store.  We basically have red and yellow peppers, a can of Rotel, four chopped tomatoes, the roux and sliced chicken sausage and chicken breasts in a big pot.  I... was doubtful, but excited at the potential!  

I just went for it and simmered the heck out of it.  I fear that the healthified version perhaps left out key ingredients though, because there just wasn't a ton of flavor.  It had kick from my cajun seasoning, and I added a bit of salt, but it wasn't what I've always imagined gumbo to be.  Granted, half the flavorful ingredients were left out so THAT could be the kicker.

Regardless, we were settled on the couch with our brown rice gumbo by 7:30, watching The Wire and navigating Pinterest (well, I was navigating Pinterest, not Brian).  And then I fell asleep.  At 9:22pm.  Brian woke me up, sent me to bed, and I don't think that I moved for SEVEN HOURS.  I set my alarm last night for 4:40am so I could go to the gym, but I cannot lie-- I woke up, reset the alarm for 6:20 and climbed back into bed.  This means that I actually got EIGHT HOURS of sleep.  This never, ever happens.  I feel like an entirely different person this morning so all of that mumbo jumbo about "Your day is determined by your previous night's sleep" is true.  

I've made a deal with myself that if I can blog for 30 consecutive days and up my followers by good old fashioned commenting to new bloggers that I start to read, I'm going to splurge on a custom blog design.  So... here we go!