Accidentally celebrating Culinarians Day

This will be my third in a series of food blogs, tomorrow, I'll go back to other stuff.  This has helped me get my head back in a good place, so thanks for letting me share that with you.

On Sunday, while we walk, my husband and I often do our meal planning for the week.  This week is a short one for meal planning, as we are taking a little mini-vacation to the Gulf Coast on Thursday and Friday, so there wasn't as many days to plan for.

We decided to experiment, and make jambalaya stuffed peppers, with a creole tomato sauce.  I went and did my grocery shopping on Sunday afternoon.

When we woke up Monday morning, I heard on the radio that Monday, July 25 was Culinarians Day, a special day for anyone who cooks.  And boy, did I cook.

It started with making the creole tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes, bell peppers, celery, onions, and garlic.  I used a recipe from a website called Deep South Dish.  Here is a link to the recipe:  Creole Tomato Sauce.

I made a couple of changes, I used Splenda instead of sugar, minced garlic (the refrigerated kind in a jar) instead of fresh garlic, and I used cayenne pepper instead of black pepper.

I blanched my peppers in the same water I had done the tomatoes in, for about 3 minutes.

I made the jambalaya with rotisserie chicken, cajun smoked sausage, and Jambalaya Girl jambalaya mix.  Being from New Jersey, I have never developed any confidence to cook Louisiana foods without mixes.  Until Jambalaya Girl, I had never found a jambalaya mix that I really liked.  This one is fabulous.  The Jambalaya Girl brings her jambalaya to local road races so that is where we learned about it.  And the Jambalaya Girl is incredibly charming and fun, so we have added this jambalaya to our rotation of meals.  The box the mix came in has a stuffed pepper recipe on the side, which gave me the idea, but we didn't follow the recipe.

So, I stuffed the peppers with the chicken and sausage jambalaya, and surrounded them with the creole tomato sauce.  This is what it looked like going into the oven:

I baked them for a half hour at 350 degrees fahrenheit. This is what it looked like when it came out:

They were really good, but the peppers were still a little crisp for my taste.  We had them again last night.  I baked the remaining two peppers for an hour, and they were perfect.  I will definitely make this dish again and again.

I started this week wondering if I would ever feel inspired to write another blog post.  Taking a break from contemplation of bigger things, and sharing my cooking adventures gave me the boost I needed to get back to being myself.

I have a list of ideas for future blog posts now.  I am back to seeing the world through my usual optimistic viewpoint.

Thanks for indulging my need to deviate from the usual.  I hope you, like me, can find a way to shift your focus for a few days when you need to so that you can find your inner happy place.

It feels good to feel like me again!