Red beans & rice, midwestern-style
Modified because of dietary restrictions, dislike of spicy foods, and a last-minute discovery of missing ingredients; I substituted leeks for onion in the trinity (pepper/celery/leeks), I used mild italian sausage instead of andouille because the bears don’t like spicy food, even something as mild as that, and no garlic because we’d run out.
The ingredients: 1 pound tofurky mild italian sausage, 1 green pepper, ~1 cup of celery, ~1 cup of leek, 16 oz of chopped canned tomatoes, 30 oz of red beans, a half tsp of pepper & oregano, plus a couple of shakes of salt & a tablespoon of olive oil to make up for the fat that was missing from the vegan sausage. It took about 60 minutes to make; 20 minutes gathering & preparing ingredients, 40 minutes of cooking, sautéing & simmering (the rice, which was Trader Joe’s precooked rice, was prepared in parallel with this.)
Stupidly simple to make, thank goodness, and a link back to my woefully short tenure in New Orleans.