Jambalaya

Hands-down the best jambalaya recipe! It is surprisingly easy to make, customizable with your favorite proteins (I used chicken, shrimp and Andouille sausage), and full of bold, zesty, Cajun flavors that everyone will love.

I thought it was time we revisit an old favorite recipe of mine here on the blog, which I love all the more because it always reminds me of two of my other old favorites — John and Cate’s Famous Jambalaya Recipe.

John and Cate were two of the very first neighbors I met when I moved to downtown Kansas City five years ago, not knowing a soul in the neighborhood when I arrived. But serendipitously, a cute new coffee shop also happened to be opening next door that very week. And after seeing John and Cate’s familiar faces there morning after morning, we all introduced ourselves and became instant friends.

For years, we crossed paths at the coffee shop nearly every morning — giving each other groggy hugs before the caffeine sunk in, catching up on the past day’s events, talkin’ shop about all things small business, ruffling the heads of one another’s pups, and finally settling in at nearby tables with our laptops to work for a few hours. Then morning hangs eventually led to evenings, where we would pop over to one another’s places for impromptu happy hour wine, sneak up to the rooftops on the 4th of July, celebrate eventual weddings and baby showers and first steps being taken, and make dozens upon dozens of dinners together — especially for our beloved weekly “neighbor nights”, where we would rally the neighbors to come together for a bbq.

These two moved from being neighbors, to what we called “freighbors”, to what we now consider “framily.” And I miss them and our Tuesday nights something fierce now, being 4800 miles across the ocean.

But whenever I pull out the ingredients to whip up a batch of their famous homemade jambalaya recipe, I’m instantly transported back to their old loft. And those impromptu, hilarious, always-longer-than-planned hours we used to spend cooking up a storm together in the kitchen. And the jambalaya simmering on the stove, wine glasses being refilled left and right, random neighbors showing up when they heard we were cooking. And easy, good, long nights shared around the table together.

As Julia Child once said, “People who love to eat are always the best people.” And John and Cate are certainly two of the best.

So is their jambalaya. ♡ ♡ ♡