Crawfish & Chicken Jambalaya

Enjoying the Crawfish at the LA State Society Boil  

Operation use things in my freezer commenced.  This afternoon, I started thinking about a stash of cleaned, cooked leftover crawfish from the Louisiana State Society's annual crawfish boil in July that I still had in my freezer.  After pigging out, the organizers let everyone take home bags of crawfish.  By the end of peeling those bad boys it was like I dragged my fingers on sandpaper covered in hot sauce.  But it was worth it.  As I am enjoying them 6 months later and mighty grateful. I heart the freezer.  I also had some leftover shredded rotisserie chicken and chopped bell pepper in the freezer. Go ahead and judge.  I use the heck out of my freezer.  But it's mostly whole foods that I've processed, soups, or frozen meals like the one you're reading about now.

Anyways, I stopped off to grab most of the ingredients on the way home to make a lightened up a Jambalaya recipe.  I looked up a few and modified.  I do that a lot.  Read like a dozen recipes and modify.  My only wish is that I remembered how long brown rice takes.. I don't like eating dinner immediately before bolting out the door to yoga.  But this made the discomfort of my full belly in shoulder stand worth it.  This came out infinitely better than I even anticipated.
  

Jambalaya
Serves 8; ~1.5 C portions (Dinner, 3 fridge portions and 4 freezer bag portions)

Chicken Sausage, Frozen crawfish, frozen
rotisserie chicken, and veggies

Ingredients
2 tsp canola oil
1 cup shredded rotisserie chicken (could cook raw chicken as well and set aside)
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 link of smoked turkey sausage (I thought I had some in my freezer.... made a trip to corner market for a substitute of 1/2 lb of chicken sausage...)
1.5 cups crawfish (or you could use raw shrimp)
1 small chopped onion
1 chopped bell pepper

Veggies Cooking

Small bunch of celery chopped
3 minced garlic cloves
1 1/2 C uncooked brown rice
1 3/4 C fat-free chicken broth
1/2 C water (maybe)
2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp cayenne
sprinkling of cajun spice - like "Slap Yo Mama"
1 can of diced tomatoes

Voila!

Heat oil in skillet medium high.  Cook sausage.  Set aside.  Cook onion, bell pepper, celery, garlic, salt and pepper.  Cook covered on low until vegetables are tender. 10-12 minutes.  Add rice; broth; spices.  Simmer 30 minutes.  May need to add water and cook longer, brown rice takes awhile.  Cook until a rice grain has the right bite and liquids are mostly absorbed.  Stir in meats (frozen crawfish, frozen cooked chicken, cooked sausage) and tomatoes and cook until heated. Eat.  I sprinkled a tad more cajun spice as I served.  Divide and freeze leftover portions.