I made gumbo the other day. The inspiration for this recipe was a bag of okra in the freezer for some unknown reason. Having spent a couple of years in South Carolina, My wife and I came to appreciate okra more than the average Oregonian. I think that it was there because we tried to bread and fry some frozen okra a year ago or so.

I am going to talk about dietary adjustments and reasons later.  For now, we have stepped up the vegetable consumption and toned way down the carbohydrates.  Traditionally, gumbo would be thickened with roux or butter and flour.  Okra does help in thickening without the added flour.  That was another reason to use it.

Lets talk about gumbo at a higher level.  Creole recipes start with ‘the trinity’.  That is celery, onion and green pepper.  I don’t worry terribly about the ratios, but equal parts of all is what I shoot for.  I do however use what I have.  Sweat those and add the rest of the ingredients and heat up and done.

Mine had sausage, chicken and shrimp.  I throw in some Cajun seasoning salt and pepper and thyme.  Top with chicken broth to desired volume.  In my research, I found that gumbo has almost as many variations as there are available ingredients.  There is ‘Lenten’ gumbo that is all vegetables, some have tomatoes, some have limited meats.

Ah hah, I added the remainder (about one cup) of leftover tortilla soup as well.  Oh, I found some leftover pasta sauce (about two cups).  Now don’t go crazy, the basic ingredients in Tortilla soup was chicken, chicken broth, stewed tomatoes and garlic.  The pasta sauce was tomato sauce, garlic and green pepper.  The only thing that might throw it off would be basil, but I doubted that the after a good measure of cayenne it would be too evident.

Traditionally, this soup would then be ladled over some rice.  Not rice with sauce, that would be jambalaya but soup with some rice.  We had some leftover rice from Thai food in the fridge, I added about a 1/4 cup for my bowl.  This came out spot on.  You couldn’t taste the melded additions and it was complex and hearty.

About ten years ago, I started doing research about diet and the effects on health.  My wife has a history of immunocompromise issues.  Through my research, I found that gluten was a primary irritant for things like psoriasis. We tried paleo for a couple of months and her psoriasis went away. We slowly added starched back in and cut out a lot of junk food.  

I would say at this point we were reduced in our carbohydrate consumption to probably half of what it was before the last experiment with paleo but psoriasis came back.  So, we are going full time low carb.  For her specifically, gluten free.  I will have some carbs now and then, I had the rice, she didn’t.  As you know, I am not going to just throw out perfectly good food.  I won’t make a habit of making it again and we are not going to be militant about it.  Everyone should enjoy the festivities of Christmas.

End Your Programming Routine: Psoriasis, Psoriatic arthritis, cancer and diabetes all run in her family.  Eliminating gluten (and sugars) reduces inflammation in the body and all of those risk factors.  Inflammation also causes stroke and arterial buildup of plaque as well.  If the research is correct, this is the right thing to do.  I guess time will tell.