Recipe of the Week: Jammin' Jambalaya

As I mentioned in my last post, I will be posting at least one recipe a week. These are recipes that I have found in various magazines, cookbooks or online. I will focus mainly on healthy recipes but I'm sure some not so healthy ones may sneak in from time to time.

This week I made "Jammin' Jambalaya", I got this recipe from my Women's Health magazine. It turned out pretty well although next time I may try to find a different type of chicken sausage. I didn't use the type that I will list in the recipe because it had pork casing and my husband doesn't eat pork. Note: make sure you add the tomatoes because I failed to do this and I kept thinking "something doesn't seem right about this" and then I realized that I had forgotten to add the tomatoes! Luckily, the jambalaya still had an hour left to cook so it wasn't that big of a deal. My husband really liked it, I thought it was okay but not the greatest thing I've ever had. However, I'm not a big fan of jambalaya in the first place so I'm probably not a great judge.

Ingredients:
1 large onion, peeled and diced
3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
2 stalks celery, diced
2 carrots, diced
2 medium-size sweet red peppers
1 15-oz can crushed tomatoes
1 c long grain brown rice
1 12 oz package andouille turkey sausage (I used a natural chicken sausage but won't again)
1 tsp hot sauce (I used about 1 tbsp, I like my food spicy!)
2 Tbsp fresh thyme, minced (or 2 tsp dried)
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
2 c water
3 Tbsp fresh parsley, minced
1 lb shrimp, peeled and devined

Instructions:
1. Place onion, garlic, celery, carrots, peppers, tomatoes, rice and sausage in the crockpot in that order.
2. Add hot sauce, thyme, salt, pepper, and water.
3. Cover and cook on low for 8 to 9 hours. (I cooked mine for 8 hours)
4. One hour before it is finished cooking, add in parsley and shrimp. Stir until well combined adding more water if needed.

Notes:
*I added some red pepper flakes as well to make it even more spicy (it still wasn't TOO spicy)
*I had to add additional water around hour 5, although this may have been due to the fact that I forgot to add the tomatoes so you may not need to do this if you actually follow the instructions, LOL.

If you try it....let me know what you think.