Contributor: Qiana Crump and her family moved here after Hurricane Katrina destroyed their neighborhood in the Gentilly area of New Orleans. She is starting a catering business called Custom Catering with friend and fellow New Orleanian Jennifer Guzman.

Crump's story (as told to Rosalind Bentley): "My grandmother Gloria Parker is from the Ninth Ward. ... My husband and our four children lived in the Gentilly area, three blocks from Lake Pontchartrain. We left that Saturday before the storm at 3 p.m. My grandmother left that Sunday and went to Dallas, where she has sisters. I wanted to stay, because every time there was a storm, it never wound up being that bad. You'd make all these preparations, put the furniture up high and all that. Then nothing. So I was thinking that would be the case again, so we grabbed three days' worth of clothes, then went to Florida.

LOUIE FAVORITE/AJC Staff (ENLARGE)

Qiana Crump stirs a pot of her grandmother's gumbo, made rich and thick with its patiently tended roux. 'I make everything the old way,' Crump says. 'It ... tastes better to me that way.'

Family (ENLARGE)

Qiana Crump's grandmother, Gloria Parker.

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"But this time they were right. We lost everything. When we finally went back, we could see we had 13 feet of water in our house. You could see the sediment line was all the way up to the gutters. It sat in water for two weeks. Everything in it floated. The refrigerator was in the living room. It was just awful.

"So we decided not to move back. My husband was a loan officer, and I managed the six properties that we owned. There's opportunity here, and we knew people here, so we moved to Jonesboro.

"My grandmother has stayed in Dallas. She's who taught me to make gumbo. She learned from her mother, and I make everything the old way, the way they did. It takes a long time, but it tastes better to me that way.

"Every holiday my grandmother would involve the girls in the family in the preparation of the gumbo. She'd have us right in there cutting up the vegetables by hand. We'd be in there a while. There was no food processor, and I still don't use one. After you'd cut up the vegetables, she'd go behind you and cut them up even finer.

"So when I became a young mother and began to cook for my husband and child, I would try to make gumbo on my own, but it wasn't turning out right. Especially the roux. I would call my grandmother and tell her and she'd say, 'What skillet are you using?' And I'd say, 'The shiny one,' meaning stainless steel. And she'd say, 'Well, first of all, you don't have the right skillet. You need cast iron.'

"So she took me to the store and we bought a cast-iron skillet, and even though it was seasoned when we bought it, she took it home and had me season it again. And she said, 'Now you're ready.'

"She likes her roux a little bit darker than caramel, but she didn't like it black. It always had to start with a roux. She'd say, 'If it's not made with roux, it's gutter water.' Then she'd put her onion, bell pepper, celery, garlic (you have to have a lot of garlic) green onion tops, [seasonings].

"Now, when it came to meat, she'd put everything in there — beef stew cuts, chicken drumettes, beef hot sausage that you take out of the casing and roll into little balls like meatballs, chicken gizzards, crab, shrimp, smoked sausage and turkey necks.

"She'd buy a bag of turkey necks, then she'd get a hammer and a knife and hit the knife with that hammer to slice the necks into little pieces. It's a workout making gumbo.

"Then you cook it for a couple of hours.

"Since we've been here, I always try to go back home about once a month to get my shrimp. I need that gulf shrimp, shrimp from that dirty water, to make my gumbo. It has to have the head on. I'll take a cooler whenever I go and bring back at least 24 pounds of shrimp and blue crab. Really, it doesn't last that long. I'll use it for jambalaya, shrimp creole and gumbo.

"My parents have moved back to New Orleans [from Dallas]. We probably won't move back, unless they fix the levees.

"I miss my grandmother, but I talk to her every day. The other day I was telling her that I was having some people over and I told her what I was going to make. And she said, 'When are they coming over?' And I said, 'In two hours.' And she just said, 'Well, girlfriend, you better get a move on.'"