Why Gumbo? That’s a question I get asked a lot. They hear me talk about gumbo, see me wear shirts with gumbo written across it and hear me referred to as Gumbo by family and friends alike. So why gumbo? For me, gumbo is much, much more than just a food. Gumbo is my metaphor for life and all of the best things in it when lived well.
Gumbo is not a microwave dinner, not something you can just heat and eat. It is the opposite of fast food. When you decide to make a gumbo you are making a commitment, setting aside the day and clearing your schedule of pretty much everything else. Gumbo is not just a meal, it’s an event. The closer I get to half a hundred the more I want my life to slow down. I burned through far too many priceless years, far too fast, with little to nothing to show for it. I’m ready to Sunday drive through life for a little while and gumbo is the perfect excuse to do so. When you tell people you are going to be making gumbo they give you time and space to do so, perhaps in hope they will be served a bowl. You don’t just cook it, you make it. When done well, the ingredients you use have to be prepared as if they are meals unto themselves. Sure you can take shortcuts, but ultimately you are just shortchanging yourself. Shortcuts are just another way of fast forwarding your life, rushing through the present thing just to get to the next thing. Life is not a to do list. A preacher friend, who is also a counselor once reminded me, “We are human BEINGS, not human DOINGS.” Sometimes you just need to slow down and “be” a little. Though it might be a hassle to smoke the chicken, make broth, brown the sausage, chop the vegetables and let the pot simmer for four, five, six hours, it is time invested, not wasted. One of the most valuable lessons everyone needs to learn in life is patience and there is no better dish than gumbo to get practice.
Just because things move slowly doesn’t mean that you don’t have to pay attention. Gumbo is the antidote to the Tik Tok trained short attention span plaguing most of our culture. People are so accustomed to speeding through life that it has shortened our attention spans. Fewer and fewer people have patience to read a book, look someone in the eye and have an in depth conversation, give the car in front of you more than a second after the light goes green before honking or wait for the ten second ad before they can watch a video. Sitting in a movie theater or a coffee shop you will see most of the patrons simultaneously “watching” a movie or having a “conversation” while scrolling through their phone. Too much of my life I have been absent in mind though present in body. Gumbo will sharpen your focus to a fine point as you carefully watch and stir your roux. Walk away from the stove, even for a couple of minutes, and you will likely end up with something that smells like a burning tire, has the consistency of wet cement and wears the name Cajun napalm for a reason. Stop stirring for too long at the wrong time and half an hour of work can be lost in an instant. Making a roux is not for people who thrive by multitasking. When you are making a roux nothing else matters, nothing else is going on in your world except the ever so slowly toasting of fat and starch, kept from burning solely by the monotonous and repetitive stirring of a wooden spoon.
Speaking of fat and starch, one of my favorite parts of gumbo is the blending of seemingly mismatched ingredients. Although people tend to be very defensive when it comes to what goes in an “authentic” gumbo, truth is, you can make it just about any way you want, there are very few rules. Gumbo is versatile, able to dress the part for almost any situation. Wild game, seafood, pork, chicken, greens, Creole, Cajun, butter, vegetable oil, lard, bacon grease, decide what you want and gumbo has an outfit to wear to your party. When these diverse delicacies come together magic happens. I’ve found that life is best when experienced like this as well. For the first thirty or so years of my life, my interactions were largely limited to people who were like me more than they were different from me. When I moved from home, traveled widely in this country and in a dozen others, I met people of every culture, race, religion, social status, economic bracket and background imaginable. My life has been greatly enhanced by these experiences. I count Hindus, Catholics, Jews, Africans, Cajuns, Creoles, Canadians, Asians, Hispanics, the wealthy and the homeless, among my friends. Those relationships have taught me more than I’ve ever learned in a classroom and what I’ve learned is that people who are radically different from me are shockingly just like me at a base level. At their base level, all gumbos are the same. The closest thing to a rule that gumbo has is some form of thickening agent. You can make a roux, add file’ powder or toss in some fresh cut okra to extract that gooey slime, it doesn’t matter. Gumbo is like life in that there is no singular right way to do it and at our core we all just want to live happy, productive lives that we share with people we love.
One of my favorite things about gumbo is its history. Few foods have such a long and storied tradition within our culture. Gumbo is a variation on a Bantu word for okra. Okra seeds were brought to the United States from Africa by the enslaved. Gumbo doesn’t require okra, but neither can it escape its influence as the dish essentially wears its name. Sitting in Miss Diane’s kitchen when I was fifteen years old, I soon learned that making a gumbo was intentional, it was an event to be shared, a communal dish and not just another meal to be eaten. Making gumbo brought people together and connected them with the past as recipes and gumbo pots were passed down from one generation to the next. If you paid attention, you wouldn’t just learn how to make a gumbo, you would learn who you are, where you came from and what it took for you to be here enjoying this robust dish that fills your belly and heart. I had no way of knowing at such a young age how much of an impact on my life this peculiar, Indian based, African influenced, French inspired — with nods from the Spanish and Caribbean — dish would have. This wasn’t a discovery as the result of a lifelong search, but a gift I was presented. Gumbo crosses all barriers, appearing on the tables of the poor and the wealthy equally. Perhaps this is why it carries its own folklore. Not many foods have a seemingly endless number of songs, books and stories written about them. Those who love gumbo love to talk about gumbo, sharing experiences, recipes and tidbits of knowledge, as well as embarrassing mistakes. In this way gumbo permeates into the fabric of our culture, simmering slowly, generation after generation as the centuries drift by, ever changing yet never forgetting its humble origins.
Gumbo is inextricably blended with its history and yet it has to embrace change to become what it is that we love so much about it. As you stir the roux it changes over time, from a pancake batter batter color and consistency, to what looks like silky dark chocolate. In time, the pancake batter will turn blonde and eventually begin to take on the color of peanut butter, which is perfect for an etouffe', but if you want gumbo, it has to change. It takes a long time for it to develop the smoky, rich complexity needed for gumbo. The same is true for us. With time, we too will change, in more ways than we can imagine when we are young. Change affects our intellect, our spirit, our understanding, our personality and perhaps the most obvious, our bodies. I say embrace the change, recognize you are becoming something much richer and with greater depth the longer you simmer.
While your gumbo simmers, you have to be very careful when stirring it. A splash as small as a drop will burn you badly and literally stick with you. Most gumbo chefs have scars from moments where they were impatient and rushing or distracted and careless. It's not just you that is easily burned, so is the roux. I can assure you, should you take up the challenge of cooking gumbo, you will burn one or two and that's ok, it's part of the learning process. When you do, throw it out and start over. Don't try to fix it or just keep going thinking those tiny black flecks can't really hurt in such a big pot, but you would be very wrong and very sorry. Everyone makes mistakes and you can't always fix them, but you can start over and learn a lesson. Gumbo has taught me that I have to be careful when dealing with other people. When I am careless and reckless with peoples feelings, someone usually gets hurt and it can stick with them for a very long time. If you’ve ever been burned you don’t want to feel it again but even more you should never want to do it to another person because you know how much it hurts.
The significance of gumbo in my life borders on a religious devotion. Coincidentally, there is even a religious tone to it….the trinity. You won’t find that word in the Bible but you will find it in virtually every church on earth, just like you will always find onion, celery and bell pepper in a gumbo. These three vegetables are such a staple in Cajun and Creole cooking that the devotees gave it the moniker “the trinity.” It’s not worship, but it is adoration, love and devotion, which is precisely what it takes to make a memorable gumbo.
Ultimately, I love gumbo so much because it summarizes life and everything I want to be remembered about mine. I want the people who crossed my path, whether family, friend or stranger, to feel like I wasn’t someone who was in a hurry to move on from them. I want to be remembered as someone who would take the time to listen or to just sit quietly without rushing others. I want to be known for taking the time to enjoy sunsets and thunderstorms and to pet a dog or sit and play with a child, to rejoice in the routine as if it was a favorite holiday. To make a gumbo is to say to those you serve, “You are worth the time, you are worth the expense, you are worth the trouble.” I want to be remember that way.
When folks think of me I want them to remember someone for whom there were no “simple” pleasures, for all pleasures are spoonfuls of grace. Remember me as content and joyous sitting in a rocking chair watching the world go by. Nothing would make me happier than to know that people saw me as someone who paid attention instead of just letting the scenery zip by at seventy miles per hour like landscapes viewed through a windshield. I want to pay attention and truly be in the moment, not haunted by the past or enchanted by the prospects of something better in the future. I want to be anchored in the eternity of now. Gumbo has taught me that it is always “now” and never “then” and I want to pass that along. We may talk of “back then” but that time has passed and no longer exists except as a memory, merely a mixture of chemicals and electricity in our brains. We may talk of what are going to do “then” as if it existed somewhere other than where we are now. There is no place you can go where a past “then” or a future “then” can be accessed, but you can be here now and that is precisely where I want to be.
My prayer is that those who come after me will learn my history, not just who I am, but who I was and where I came from and how I arrived at this place. Only when you know the hardships in the history can you fully savor the flavor of where it all ended. God help the ones I love to know the journey and not just the destination. Perhaps it can serve, not as a road map for them to follow, but landmarks in the terrain to help them orient themselves toward where they want to be. A life well lived would be one filled with all sorts of mismatched people and diverse experiences. I want to teach and learn and experiment and discover. People of all stripes are welcome to simmer in my pot with me and see if we can create something we will talk about the rest of our lives, something that might outlive us. Like gumbo, I never want to forget where I came from and yet I want to be able to adapt to any circumstance I encounter, picking up and letting go of whatever I need to along the way. Maybe more than anything else, I want the people who knew me to know there was never a time or an area of my life where the Trinity was not present. There were times I needed a Father, there were days I learned to love from the Son and everyday I was kept through His Spirit. That is “why” gumbo.
