Maque Choux. Bless you.

There are certain foods that people like that I really wish I could like, but do not. Mushrooms fall into this category. Bleu cheese. Cantaloupe. Fennel. It's not a very long list. Oh, and there's one more. Okra.

I've been trying to like okra for awhile now. But like my problem with mushrooms, it's a textural thing. Mushrooms are spongy and odd. Okra is slimy.

I've tried it fried, added to soup, in gumbo. Slimy, slimy and slimy. But recently I've had two separate conversations with okra lovers, real born and raised Southerners. I approached it politely. "Don't you find okra to be a bit, you know, slimy?" I asked. Not at all they insisted. Both of these people suggested stewed tomatoes and okra. Okra turned up in our box this week, so why not give it a try?

I found this simple vegetarian recipe for Stewed Corn and Tomatoes, or maque choux, on Epicurious.  Maque choux is a Cajun dish, based on a Native American one. You're supposed to use fresh corn, but I only had frozen. Wrong and I'm sorry-- and I promise next time to use fresh.

But everything else was completely fresh.
Homegrown peppers.

CSA tomatoes.

I made a couple of other changes. We had a big leek so I used that instead of the scallions. And I left out the jalapeno seeds, being a wimp about spicy stuff, and a hater of seeds in my food. Seriously, pepper seeds drive me crazy. Any time I cut one up, any variety, I have to completely remove any and all seeds from the pepper and from the cutting board before I can move ahead with slicing or dicing, or whatever.

So now that you know about more about my food compulsions than you ever wanted to. The maque choux. It smelled wonderful. The corn was sweet, the tomatoes delicious. The jalapenos were just the right amount of spicy. The okra. It tasted good. The slime was still there though. But I admit: the whole of stewed tomatoes and okra is pretty much larger than the sum of its parts.