From Mom's Kitchen, to Ours, to Yours

My mom is an awesome cook and I've learned a lot about cooking from her. She cooks a lot of good Cajun food like red beans and rice, crawfish etouffee, gumbo, and cabbage rolls. She also makes the best roast with rice and gravy ever!!!! Plus so many other good things like chicken and dumplings, chicken tettrazini, pasta puttanesca, vegetable soup, lasagna, bread pudding, I could seriously go on forever, but those are some of my favorites. Also, these are all things that in my mind, no one will ever make as good as her. I was never a picky eater growing up, I loved pretty much everything she cooked, but I particularly loved crawfish (shocking, I know). I just thought it would be nice to share my appreciation for her, her cooking, and one of her recipes with you. I generally am all about cooking healthy when I can. However, I should warn you that this really falls into the comfort food category, but its sooooo worth it!

Crawfish and Corn Chowder

Ingredients

• 1 pound Peeled And Precooked Crawfish Tails (You Can Buy Frozen Or Use Leftovers From A Crawfish Boil)
• 12 ounces, weight Bacon
• 2 cups Diced Potatoes
• 1 cup Diced Onions
• 2 cans (15 Oz. Can) Regular Or Cream Style Corn
• 2 Tablespoons Butter
• 2 pints Half-and-half (I often sub 1 pint of skim milk to cut some of the calories, or you could sub 2 pints of skim milk and mix in a little flour to thicken it up)
  
• 1 Tablespoon Tony Chacheres (or Your Favorite Cajun Seasoning)
• 1 teaspoon Tabasco (optional)

Preparation:

Fry bacon until crisp, reserving 4 tablespoons of grease. Saute potatoes and onions in the reserved bacon grease in a Dutch oven for about 15 minutes. Add butter, corn, cream, seasoning and Tabasco. Crumble bacon and add to the chowder. Cook on low heat until potatoes are tender, approximately 20-30 minutes. Add crawfish tails and simmer for 15 minutes more minutes (since the tails are pre-cooked, you don’t want them to get too tough). If you don’t have crawfish available, you can always use shrimp instead. Enjoy!