Gumbo: Mmm Good

I’ve never been a big fan of gumbo.  It always seemed to me to be just so much fish stew.  Or chicken stew.  Or sausage stew mixed with a bunch of rice and spices; mostly Cajun in origin.  It was always too much for my uneducated palate or maybe, conversely, too unsubtle for me to appreciate.  It was always like eating liquid meatloaf.
 

One trip to New Orleans was all it took to open my eyes to gumbo.  Practically every restaurant, large or small, fancy or down-to-earth, has gumbo on its menu.  It seemed like, to varying degrees, they were all really good.  My favorite basic ingredient was shrimp but that’s because, well, I really like shrimp.  Doing a little research I found that there is a tremendous variety of gumbos that lay claim to being gumbo; some chefs/cooks touting their own recipes over others, but most seeming to use a brown roux for thickening.  Okra is also high up on the ingredient scale.
 
Speaking of taste, I think hotdogs sliced thin would be a good substitute for chicken or sausage.  Now there is a low-brow ingredient that might make me successfully roux the day.