Trix are for kids....and so is Mardi Gras.

Last night as I was going to bed I saw a sticky note on the dresser my husband brought home from work...a reminder to bring something in for a Mardi Gras potluck.  With all the upcoming planning I have been doing for my annual St. Patrick's Day festivities, I mistakenly overlooked the famous Fat Tuesday.  Then I stopped and thought, "Wait, I have never really celebrated Mardi Gras".  So I decided that instead of mentally beating myself up, my energy would better be put to use brainstorming some ideas for a fabulous Mardi Gras Dinner Party for the kids.  Any occasion can be a reason to have a party...or as Brenna kept calling it, a Mardi Party!!  I went to bed pondering how I was going to turn this clearly adult holiday into something G rated.  I mean who doesn't think of women flashing their unmentionables for a couple of 50 cent plastic beads or crowds of people dressed in outrageous colorful outfits consisting of feathers, sequins and the like stumbling around drunkenly having the time of their lives.  Maybe it's just me and maybe it's stereotypical....but that is what pops into my head.  Then it hit me that I don't even know WHY Mardi Gras is celebrated.  I really know nothing about Creole or Cajun cooking or lifestyle period.   I woke up and started thinking about what to make.  First stop...the internet.  Why is Mardi Gras celebrated?  I found some nice information at http://www.americancatholic.org/features/mardigras/.  Who knew it was a Catholic holiday!!!  I mean I always knew Catholics favored their wine, but still!  Long story short, it the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday where people have their "last hurrah" before giving up their vices for Lent.  So THAT'S why people there party so hard.  Who knew ALL those people drunkenly stumbling around were really Catholics living it up for one last night! I can handle that! ;)

First course of action would be forming my menu.  Due to lack of time, I quickly settled on a recipe for a chicken gumbo and decided to add some turkey sausage and a can of red beans served over rice. I decided that since I needed to go to the store for a few things I would break down and begrudgingly buy some lettuce despite the higher price (a whole $.99 cents more...break the bank!!!) because I didn't want another saladlessness night.  Plus I wasn't sure what else to serve with it.  On a side note, Mardi Gras has made me realize 2 things about myself.  1) I am a REALLY boring salad person.  My standard is iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, black olives, shredded cheddar, croutons and dressing.  Yawn!!  I'm always wanting to try new things, but for some reason the idea of fruit in my salad or other random things makes me a bit scared and I retreat to the good old standard mention in the previous sentence.  So here is to me being more daring with my side salads and dressings in the future!!  Tonight I even threw in some red bell pepper and onion.  WOW!   2) I am REALLY scared of going out of my spice comfort zone (SCZ).  When I saw this recipe called for THYME I immediately started to think about substituting basil instead.  Then I stopped, took a deep breath and said, "No, you WILL use the thyme and you just might like it".  Aside from your standard black pepper, salt, garlic powder, onion powder, parsley, basil, oregano, chili powder and an occasional bay leaf, I really am very afraid of almost every other herb and spice.  I guess I've always just liked sticking to what I know I like for fear of ruining an entire meal with one flavor.  Recently, I discovered I love, love, love, love cumin so who knows what other spices I might love, love, love if I just try them.  So I digress....

Whenever I have a "special occasion" meal I always like to find a fun dessert to go with it because dessert is one thing that is often NOT served in my home.  In scouring the internet I found an interesting recipe for a Mardi Gras King Cake.  It's basically a big round danish with a plastic baby placed inside it after it's baked.  That's right...a plastic baby!!  If you find the baby in your piece it means you will have good luck for the next year.  I guess if you manage to not choke on the baby while eating that would be a pretty lucky start, so why not have that luck carry over into the following year.  I always assumed that a surprise baby resulting from Mardi Gras would be an unlucky thing to have happen!!  Guess I was wrong.  Oh well, my kids would think it was pretty fun anyway!  Honorable mention to my mom for leaving me a small plastic baby when she moved back to CA.  Thanks Mom!  

What else does a good dinner party need?  Music.  Found a Cajun music channel on Pandora...check.  Fun activity.  Found a template for a mask online so the kids could decorate Mardi Gras masks...check.  All in all I think the "party" went pretty well.  You can judge for yourself...maybe I'll have 100 people on my doorstep next year begging for some Fat Tuesday action!!

Chicken, Sausage and Red Bean Gumbo: Started by making a roux with butter and flour and cooking until the color of a copper penny.  This was the first time I ever made a roux!!  Pretty easy actually.  The added onion and green pepper until tender.  To the pot added chicken broth, a can of undrained tomatoes, a small can green chilies, a can of kidney beans, celery, thyme (that's right....used it AND I liked it...hooray for breaking out of the SCZ), black pepper, garlic, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, salt and parsley.  Cooked about 45 mins.  Served it over white rice.  It was delicious.  It did call for cayenne pepper, but I was afraid that with the whole can of chilies it would be way too spicy for my kids.  I will make them take just one bite if it's too flavorful.  I will not, however, make them take just one bite if I'm afraid it will burn a hole in their stomach!!  As with anything, I figured you could always add more heat, but you can't take it away.  I think I'll add a little cayenne pepper to my leftovers for lunch.  BAM...gotta kick it up a notch!  Another honorable mention to my mom who provided me with the ladle to spoon out the gumbo because up until 2 days ago, I didn't own a ladle!  Plus it was an Iron Chef of America ladle which made me feel all professional!! 

Some of the ingredients prepped and ready to go.

The copper roux.  Pretty!

Everything in the pot pre-cooking.  Looks good!

The finished gumbo over rice and salad.

Delicious!!



King Cake: Brenna had so much fun helping me make this round danish type cake.  The best part was the dough could be made in my bread machine thanks to a suggestion from one of the recipe reviewers.  The filling is delicious...made of butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, pecans, flour and chopped raisins.  Topped with a confectioner sugar frosting and decorated with green, purple and yellow sprinkles.  It did take some time, but was well worth the work and tasted like cinnamon raisin bread.

Ingredients in the bread machine.

Bread machine in action...kind of a cool shot.

Assistant Chef preparing the filling.

The delicious filling.

After about 2 hours we had dough.

Assistant chef ready to roll out the dough.

Rolling the dough.  Sorry, I don't own a rolling pin!!

The dough rolled out.

Assistant Chef adding the filling.

Cake rolled up.  Not the best photo of the Assistant Chef.

Dough rolled up into a ring and sliced.

The finished cake.  I think the cake should have been baked at a lower temperature than the recipe called for!!  It didn't taste burned though.

Assistant Chef decorating with Mardi Gras colored sprinkles.

The finished cake.  Where's The Baby?!? =)

She couldn't wait to try a piece!!

Delicious!!

The Festivities: Tyler and Brenna loved decorating their masks and in the attempt to be a fun Mom, I resisted the urge to withhold the messy paints and let them just have fun.  Amazingly they didn't make too horrible of a mess!!  Best part was it kept them busy while I made the gumbo AND it didn't cost me a penny!!  After they were done they put on some beads (which for the record I did NOT get in the standard Mardi Gras fashion) and danced around to Cajun music.  I have discovered Cajun music is pretty cool...at least one day out of the year anyway.  Although all of the songs did kind of sound the same to me and a lot of it was either in French or sung by a person I couldn't understand because of the heavy Creole accent.  If you've never heard it, go to pandora.com and type "Cajun" in the search engine.

I actually got a picture of Tyler!!!

That's paint you're looking at!!  YEAH MOMMY!!

Brenna with her masks and beads.

Tyler with his mask and beads.

Aiden with his mask and beads.

Is that the baby from the King Cake?  Nope, it's just Ethan, my Mardi Gras baby! =)

Why go all the way to New Orleans when you can bring New Orleans to Ohio!!  Fat Tuesday was a success!!