I'm the last food purist you'll ever meet, so here's a plain old accounting of what I cooked a pot of on a rainy December afternoon. It starts off as a gumbo learned from a Louisiana-born friend at a French Canadian's home near Paris, wanders through the leftovers in our fridge and pantry, and last night wound up topped with hunks of cheddar cheese (gasp!) so I could get some freakin' calories already.

Note: unabashedly unvegetarian. Try substituting 3 diced hard-boiled eggs, vegetarian sausage, and chick patties and replacing the 1 bouillion cube + 2 cans soup with 2-3 vegetarian "chicken" bouillion cubes.

Assemble this
1/2 stick butter
1/2 cup flour

1 onion, diced
5 cloves garlic, minced
3 bay leaves
1 T thyme
1 T salt
2 t ground black pepper
1 T dried shallot
2 t paprika
1 heaping t cayenne

1 carrot, penny slices
1 green pepper, diced
1 red pepper, diced
2 tomatoes, seeded but unpeeled, diced

1 can crushed tomato
2 cans chicken and rice soup
2 cans water
1 cube chicken bouillion diluted in 1 can water (this is stew-y rather than soup-y, and your whole bouillion cube will never dissolve)

1 large chicken thigh, precooked from deli or left over
2 mango habanero chicken sausages
1/2 pound shrimp

1 cup white rice, uncooked

Execute this

1. At the bottom of a fat old stew pot, place the butter and flour. Turn the head on to low and beat furiously until your roux turns the color and texture, but not smell, of molasses. Tired? Keep going. It takes forever. Stop just this side of burning.
2. Add onion, garlic, and spices and sauté until onion is translucent.
3. Add rest of vegetables, sauté until cooked.
4. Add liquids bring to boil and then let simmer, uncovered, while you prep rest of ingredients and clean up.
5. Dice chicken and sausage, add with shrimp to pot.
6. Add uncooked rice.
7. Simmer, covered, for at least one hour.