Southern Living Week: One-Pot Shrimp and Grits

While on Thanksgiving vacation,  I read my mother-in-laws Southern Living and loved the recipes in the "7 Meals A Making" story.  

When I got home, I bought my own copy and decided that I could make these recipes over this week. I  went to the grocery with magazine in hand and checked off the ingredients as I filled my cart.  People always talk about how expensive fresh food is, but the total bill came in at $192 which breaks down to just $3.43 a serving!  The meals make 8 servings so we are getting dinner for 4 plus 4 lunches which is saving lots of money as our cafeteria lunch at work averages $7-8.  From my way of thinking, fresh food is cheaper in the long run, even fast food costs more than $3.43 a meal!

All meals are copied from the following edition and can be found on myrecipes.com:

On Sunday, I made the first meal which was the One-Pot Shrimp and Grits.  I had never cooked grits before so I was a bit hesitant, but they were super easy!  Another plus for grits is they are made of corn so they are gluten free!  This was a low mess meal since it was in one pot.  I did a couple of short cuts using quick cook grits and already deveined and shelled shrimp so my total time from start to finish was about 50 minutes.  

My pictures aren't as pretty as the food magazine photographers.  They don't do justice to how good this meal tasted.  My family wants it to stay high in the rotation :o)

Here is what I did.  After chopping and dicing all the ingredients, I browned the andouille sausage.

After the sausage, the shrimp got a quick sauté,

Then all the veggies were softened up before the broth was added.

Last, but not least the grits were added and after cooking for 15 minutes, I added the andouille and shrimp back to the pot to heat for 5 minutes before serving.  I would recommend this recipe for all shrimp lovers! :o)