Happy Mardi Gras!

It seems we’ve just finished planning and shopping and cooking and giving for Valentine’s Day and now another big food day descends upon us, that of Mardi Gras!

Many people associate Mardi Gras with New Orleans jazz bands, parade krewes and overall hedonistic behavior.  I’d say that’s about right.

Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Tuesday, Fat Tuesday (or in French, it’s Mardi Gras) and Carnival.  Whatever one calls it, it adds up to a day for some, of pure debauchery.  For most, it’s a day marked by parades, costumes, gatherings, dancing and lots of feasting. (Coming from someone who, while in college, experienced Canal and Bourbon Streets and the French Quarter during this celebration, that could be putting it mildly.)

It’s the day before the solidarity act of “giving up,” as on Ash Wednesday the 40-day season of Lent begins.  Christians, historically Catholic Christians, will attend Ash Wednesday services tomorrow where again, in my Catholic faith, the ash from last year’s Palm Sunday leaves burnt to an ash and mixed with anointed oil, is spread by priestly thumb across the foreheads of the faithful and we are reminded, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

I know quite a few people who aren’t Catholic or even Christian who observe Lent. They appreciate having a designated time to reflect inward, observe habits, live more simply, and give more generously to others. And yet today, we mark our plans on how to spend our last day, Shrove Tuesday, before Ash Wednesday which is a day marked by fasting and launches the solemn period of Lent toward the most symbolic day in a Christian’s journey of faith, Easter.

My current plan for today is to attend Southside Grille and Smokehouse in Landrum.  I could don a mask of sequins and feathers, along with a dazzling black evening gown, and head off to Sarah McClure’s Mardi Gras Party designed to take us to the Bayou and laissez les bons temps rouler.  There I will have a little of everything I’ll be swearing off for the next six weeks.  Since we will also fast from meat on Fridays during Lent and focus on simpler meals and fewer nights out, I plan to indulge on Southside���s Cajun-creole buffet line of jambalaya and etouffee, king cakes and beignets, washing them down with a Sazerac or two.

The official Mardi Gras colors are green for faith, gold for power, and purple for justice.  Your King Cakes are glittered in these colors and your beads go on the cakes as well as around your neck!  A small trinket or coin is baked somewhere in the cake and the finder is the keeper of the year’s best luck.

Other Fat Tuesday food traditions include breaking out flour, eggs and cream and making pancakes.  If you do choose to make pancakes, you just might have to make the Pioneer Woman’s Sour Cream Pancakes.  They are divine and seem just right for today.

Go out and celebrate lagniappe tonight.  For many of us not living in poverty, disease or hunger, six weeks is a long Lenten journey of humility and sacrifice to Easter.