This comes almost straight out of The Perfect Recipe for Losing Weight and Eating Great, a cookbook I liked so much I sent copies to my sister and best friend. I really like Pam Anderson’s books and have several. This one appealed to me because it deals with the “eating lunch at home” issue. I work from my home but I don’t really want to cook a lunch every day! She has some great ideas for lunches and salads that work great. This is one of the soups, which comes from a master recipe she has. One of the variations is this shrimp and sausage gumbo version, which was really good, both for dinner last night and lunch today. I have 1 or 2 more servings left as well.

• 1 quart (4 cups) chicken broth
• 1 15 oz can diced tomatoes with juice
• 2 tsp olive oil
• 1 onion, peeled and diced
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme
• 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
• 3 small sausages (6 ounces), sliced thinly
• 6 oz shrimp (I used frozen)
• 1 yellow bell pepper, stemmed, seeded and diced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 6 oz frozen okra
• 1/4 cup raw white rice
• hot sauce (Tabasco) served at the table

If your broth is frozen, as mine was, microwave until warmed. Throw in the tomatoes and warm them too.

Heat the oil in a Dutch oven or soup pot and cook the onion about 5 minutes, stirring. Add the thyme and cayenne and stir, cooking another minute or two. Add the sliced sausage (I used a smoked beef but almost anything would be good), yellow pepper, celery, okra, rice, broth and tomatoes and bring to a simmer. Reduce heat, cover partially, and simmer about 20 minutes, stirring now and then. Turn off the heat and stir in the shrimp. Cover and let stand 5 minutes until the shrimp is cooked through.  I allowed about 7 minutes since my shrimp was frozen but if I’d thought ahead I would have run it under cold water to defrost first.

Stir and serve with the hot sauce at the table so everyone can make it as hot (or not) as they like.  This was really, really good!  It’s like a thick soup. I’ve never had gumbo anywhere so have no idea how “authentic” it is, but can say it’s good!  And was just as good for lunch today. I just microwaved a bowl for a few minutes to warm it up. Mmm!