Jambalaya

We had made pizza Friday night for supper, so had leftover garlic sausage.  This made me decide to make Jambalaya.  Now when I'm making this gluten-free; you have to be careful about what type of sausage you use.  In western Canada at least, I find that the Grimms brand is gluten-free; but the cheap no-name varieties will nearly always have flour as a filler.

1 onion chopped
1 green pepper, diced
1 cup diced celery
1/2 pound garlic sausage or kielbasa, cut into small slices or chunks (this is a cooked-type sausage)
1/2 pound ham, diced
1 - 28 oz can diced tomatoes (go for the low salt variety)
2 cups fish or seafood
2 cups shrimp (optional - but really nice; remove the tails ends)
1 tsp dried chilies
1 bay leaf
2 cups water or beef bullion
1.5 cups brown rice (I prefer the basmati rice)

If you're going to make this in advance and freeze it; you can mix everything together and freeze it now, before cooking anything. Freeze it in a large freezer bag (label the bag with a permanent marker).  Then thaw it the day you want it, and bake it in a covered dish (I used my dutch oven, but you can also use a 9x13 in pan and cover it with tinfoil) for about 1 hour at 350 until done.  (A slow cooker doesn't cook rice very well, it tends to be crunchy.)  You can also cook it in a dutch oven on the stove; bring it to boiling, then turn the burner down to low.

We made this with a bag of mixed sea food because I didn't have fish in the freezer and ring of shrimp that we had bought around Christmas and forgotten and was getting freezer burn and needed using.