Her first stray from the recipe was she cooks with less than the suggested 2 gallons of water/broth and then adds to it as she sees fit. I just went whole hog and dumped in the 2 gallons, like the recipe said. When making the roux, the recipe says to cook it until it becomes "the color of an old penny." I cook it until I think it's pretty dark and ask if it looks right to her. She goes and gets a penny to place on the counter next to me as a reference. Cute.
So I keep stirring and it's starting to smell like it's burnt and ask again if it's done. It gets to the point of looking like tar before she says it's perfect. So we forge ahead with the recipe and I'm waiting to see when she adds more liquid since we've only done a scant gallon and it's calling for 2.
We go through the entire recipe, which filled up her stock pot, and we never added anymore liquid. It was a quart shy of a full gallon. So I had 1 1/4 gallons more than she did. No wonder my gumbo was all wrong! I get hysterical about the recipe and how no wonder my gumbo was awful and all she has to say is, "[Who she got the recipe from] isn't precise on measurements." No kidding.
The gumbo turned out marvelous and even my dad, who is hard to please when it comes to true Louisiana cooking and finds something to complain at every Louisiana restaurant, said the gumbo was really good. Success!
So I'm basking the afterglow of righting my wrong and realizing that if the recipe is all wrong, it's not your fault and shouldn't feel inept all through dinner and continues on until we have to put all this gumbo up. We were worried we were going to run out of plastic containers it was so much leftover food. I fill up 3 of our biggest containers and still have a little leftover for us to freeze for later. I get out a quart sized hard plastic container for freezing and fill up as much as I can with the measuring cup. Then I ask Mom if she'd help me by either holding the pot over the container while I scrap the bottom out with a spoon or vice versa. She decides to hold the pot while I scrape. I finish getting all of the gumbo and it fits in the container just perfectly. Mom says, "Hang on, I need to set this pot down because it's heavy and hot," and tries to place it on the counter. The problem was she tried to set the big pot on the counter where the quart container was and managed to tip the container forward so it flies off the counter. Somehow the pot managed to stay on the counter, but the entire contents of the quart container splattered all over the floor.
I jump back into the wall to try to save myself from the splatter and only manage to get some on one of my toes. I look at the mess all on the floor and there is steam rising from pile because it had been on the stove on warm all through dinner for us to keep coming back for more and we cleaned up right after we were done eating so it hadn't had much time to cool off. I look over at Mom and she's got it all on the front of her shirt and her feet are just covered in it. She tried to fling some of it off but it was sticking pretty good. Let me also point out that we were both barefoot when this happened. No wonder they want you to wear close toed shoes in cooking classes.
Mom just looks back and forth between me and the mess while my mouth just hangs open in shock. It looked like she couldn't tell if she wanted to laugh or cry, but thankfully laughing type noises were coming from her. This is when I decide to move and try to wipe off the bottoms of our feet so she can go rinse them off in the tub. All my mom managed to say throughout this whole moment of shock and terror was, "It's burning my feet." So I got cold water running and ushered her towards the bathroom while I cleaned up the mess.
Apparently I'm cursed when it comes to gumbo. Gumbo voodoo.
