The official start of Mardi Gras or carnival season in New Orleans starts on Wednesday, January 6, 2010, which marks the Feast of Epiphany, also known as the Twelfth Night of Christmas.  It marks the day the wise men brought gifts to the Christ Child. By doing so they ‘revealed’ or ‘made known’ Jesus to the world as Lord and King. As the Mardi Gras season starts this year Fat Tuesday falls on February 16, 2010, always the day before Ash Wednesday, which is the beginning of Lent for fasting and abstinence in the Catholic Church.

“If you go to New Orleans You ought to go see the Mardi Gras.” That famous lyric in the song “Go to the Mardi Gras” as sung by Professor Longhair can be heard every year on most Crescent City radio stations during Mardi Gras season. This YouTube video includes the song made famous and still heard today, along with some images from some of the carnival seasons of past.

Mardi Gras Series Blog Team

Drick Perry who has Drick’s Rambling Café blog and I have teamed up as we both start promoting Mardi Gras on our respective blog’s, specifically Drick concentrates on the Mobile, Alabama Mardi Gras influence, and I will focus on the New Orleans Mardi Gras traditions. Please join me with Drick and his first post in the series entitled Mardi Gras – Cajun Pick-Me-Ups.

The King Cake

One of the great treats for Mardi Gras season is the magnificent King Cake parties that start up, and becomes a boon for local bakeries and markets. Estimates show that New Orleans area bakeries and markets sell around 4,000 to 5,000 King Cakes a day during carnival.

While the days that King Cakes are available at local bakeries and groceries in and around southeast Louisiana, in particular New Orleans seem to get extended a few days every year, traditionally King Cakes are only available during the Mardi Gras season. The typical King Cake is an oval or round shaped dough which is formed from a yeast risen sweet dough similar to cinnamon roll or Danish dough. Recipes vary from bakery to restaurant to grocery, but the basic King Cake dough is laced with lots of cinnamon and sugar and topped with icing and then sprinkled with tinted sugars of purple, green and gold. Many variations of fillings are available also depending on the shop, but some of my favorite fillings are cream cheese, raspberry, lemon, cherry, blueberry and my all time favorite is my chocolate filled King Cake. Inside each king cake is a small plastic baby, which the baker gently hides after it is baked and cooled. At Mardi Gras gatherings whoever finds the piece of cake with the baby is crowned king or queen for the day and must bring a king cake to the next party. From junior through high school every Mardi Gras season some of our classes would celebrate a weekly party to honor the long tradition.

A select few bakeries’ offer to ship king cakes including Haydel’s, Randazzo’s and others, usually overnight or 2 day shipping is preferred. When I operated Boudreaux’s Restaurant I sold about 2 to 3 dozen king cakes a week during the Mardi Gras season, I wished they were as popular the rest of the year too!

The History of King Cake

The New Orleans custom began in the late 1800’s and celebrates Epiphany with cakes that are baked to honor the three kings. The oval or round shape signifies their circular journey to confuse King Herod. The plastic baby represents Jesus. In addition, the search for the baby is represented by the mystery of who will get the slice with the plastic baby in it. However, with legalities the way they are many do not place the baby in the cake, but will leave it out for the customer to place it, removing any liability from the shop for supposed folks who may swallow the plastic baby. For more history about Mardi Gras and King Cakes, check out the links at the end of this post.

Ever wonder why Mardi Gras colors are purple, green and gold? The traditional colors of Mardi Gras are purple (symbolic of justice), green (symbolic of faith) and gold (symbolic of power). The accepted story behind the original selection of these colors originates from 1872 when the Grand Duke Alexis Romanoff of Russia visited New Orleans. It is said that the Grand Duke came to the city in pursuit of an actress named Lydia Thompson. During his stay, he was given the honor of selecting the official Mardi Gras colors by the Krewe of Rex…thus, did these colors also become the colors of the House of Romanoff. The 1892 Rex Parade theme (“Symbolism of Colors”) first gave meaning to the representation of the official Mardi Gras colors. Interestingly, the colors of Mardi Gras influenced the choice of school colors for the Louisiana arch-rival colleges, Louisiana State University and Tulane University. When LSU was deciding on its colors, the stores in New Orleans had stocked-up on fabrics of purple, green and gold for the upcoming Mardi Gras Season. LSU, opting for purple and gold, bought a large quantity of the available cloth. Tulane purchased much of the only remaining color …green (Tulane’s colors are green and white).

If you have never been to Mardi Gras or seen or eaten a King Cake, now is the time to share in the enduring New Orleans tradition! Tomorrow I will post my favorite King Cake recipe so you too can make your own. On the other hand, you can have one shipped and you too can celebrate one of the biggest Aha! moments in recorded history.

References

• A Taste of Mardi Gras – NPR
• Mardi Gras in New Orleans
• New Orleans Mardi Gras – Wiki
• The Traditions of Mardi Gras

Have your King Cakes shipped

• Gambino’s Bakery
• Haydel’s Bakery
• Manny Randazzo’s Bakery
• Randazzo’s Camellia City Bakery

For New Year’s we decided to continue in following with the tradition of cabbage for money, black-eyed peas for health, and pork for wealth, and the perfect way to combine a few of this into one dish! Therefore, we set out to make our cabbage roll stuffing with some Italian sausage, which contains ground pork, and stuffed inside the cabbage, this combines two of the required ingredients. We had some leftover black-eyed-pea soup that I re-heated and thickened with a bit of Wondra flour to make it a side dish. In addition, with some left over tomato sauce and cabbage leaves, we combined those to make a smothered cabbage in tomato sauce.

Monique and I decided that these cabbage rolls would be our new New Years Day dinner tradition, and next time around will include some fresh black eyes in the stuffing, making the perfect trifecta good luck treat.

Happy New Year!

Procedure Steps    Note: Click thumbnails for a larger view.
1.	Put the whole cabbage into a large stockpot and cover with water, add the salt and bring to a boil. Continue boiling to soften the cabbage leaves. While the cabbage is cooking start preparations on the stuffing and then the sauce.
1.	For the stuffing: Heat the olive oil in a large sauté pan and add the onions and celery and sauté until translucent then add the garlic and continue over the heat for a few more minutes.
2.	Add the raw Italian pork sausage and brown until all pink is gone. Add the rosemary, garlic salt, and black pepper and stir well to incorporate and continue to heat through a few more minutes.
3.	Transfer the sausage and vegetables to a large bowl and allow cooling to room temperature, and then add the cooked rice, paprika and stir well. Then add the beaten eggs, and then the breadcrumbs to form the stuffing.
4.	For the sauce: In a medium saucepan add the tomato paste, red wine, crushed tomatoes, Italian seasoning, and the Worcestershire sauce, combine well and bring to simmer for 30 minutes.
5.	Once the cabbage leaves are tender, pull them gently from the bottom stem one leaf at a time using a pair of metal tongs, and drain them in large bowl, allowing them to cool before stuffing.
6.	To stuff the leaves cut the tough stem portion of about 2 inches from the bottom in a V shape, then add about ¼ cup of the stuffing at the bottom of the leaf. Then starting from the bottom roll the leaf around the stuffing then fold the edges over and then continue rolling. Place stuffed cabbage rolls onto a greased baking pan.
7.	Once you have the baking pan full of cabbage rolls, top with the tomato sauce and then add the grated parmesan cheese.
8.	Bake in a pre-heated 350° F. oven for about an hour or until heated through and sauce is bubbling and cheese is browned.

We have prepared hand made pizzas on several occasions and is quite fun to do when staying in a cabin, which is what we did on our first night at the Paradise Point cabin last week for our Christmas trip which I posted about our adventures and misadventures earlier in the week with Mountain Christmas Cabin Adventures.

A short note of apology! If you reached any of my web pages recently and got a warning about malware being installed from the site, this issue has been resolved. A third-party ad link was the suspected culprit. This message from Google Webmaster tools: A review for this site has finished. The site was found clean. The badware warnings from web search are being removed. Please note that it can take some time for this change to propagate.

I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused any of my visitors, it is certainly an issue that has caused much headache and pain that was very unexpected. I know of a few other foodie bloggers who have had the same issue crop up for their sites, and it is no fun being targeted by hackers and also having your site blacklisted in the process. Now, back to the pizza recipe.

This is a simple and quick from scratch and hand made pizza dough recipe. Below this is a list of suggested toppings, and my quick tomato sauce recipe too.

Pizza Dough

If you want that crisp, restaurant-quality pizza crust in your own home, cook your pizza on a pizza stone. A pizza peel is a handy tool, too, for transferring your pizzas to and from the oven. A Pizza Stone and Peel Set is inexpensive and adds professional pizzazz to the pizza making event.

Family eagerly anticipating some pizza!

A Short List of Suggested Toppings

Meats

Italian sausage, browned and drained
Bacon, cooked, drained and chopped
Canadian bacon
Pepperoni
Shrimp, pre-cooked
Crabmeat
Anchovies
Boneless chicken strips, pre-cooked

Vegetables

Bell peppers, red, green, yellow, sliced
Red onions, sliced
Artichoke hearts, quartered
Capers
Black olives, sliced
Green olives, sliced
Celery, sliced
Spinach leaves, steamed
Broccoli, par-boiled and chilled
Cauliflower, par-boiled and chilled

Cheeses

Feta cheese, crumbled
Mozzarella cheese, shredded
Provolone cheese, shredded
Romano, Parmesan, or hard Ricotta cheese, shredded

This Christmas we decided to pack up the van and head for the mountains since Bryan was making the trip for the holidays we might get to spend some time and play in the snow. The Thursday before Christmas Bryan and his girlfriend Alek flew in from Louisiana and after a few days around the town and relaxing around the house, we departed on our Christmas cabin trip on Wednesday (12/23/09) morning for the western mountain region of North Carolina, specifically Creston, NC. We rented the Paradise Pointe cabin for five days and four nights, located on a high ridge looking over the valley with snow all around, and it was quite a treat and an adventure too. In fact, each day was filled with a new, unexpected, and unusual exploit.

Day 1, Wednesday, 12/23/09

As we drive west from Wake Forest early Wednesday morning, we noticed that the previous weeks snowfall still had accumulation just west of Durham and continued to build the further we continued along the road. Piles of the powdery white stuff got bigger and abandoned vehicles were still strewn about parts of I-40 and US 421. We arrived at Boone, NC around noon, and just in time for lunch, but first we stopped at the Mast General Store on West King Street to get some gloves that Bryan and Alek needed for the planned snow activities.

After finding some nice deals on warm socks too and a new carabineer for my key ring, we found the Boone Drug Fountain and Grill across the street and it had a lunch counter and had a wonderful lunch in an old time setting.  Once we sat down were pleasantly surprised to find this little gem. It has an old diner feel with counter service and tables, set next to the drug store and pharmacy.

The menu is about what you would expect from a diner/grill, plenty of sandwiches, burgers, salads, and even a selection of daily menu specials too. The menu items are reasonably priced, for five of us our lunch total was $40.00 + tip, and this included a few desserts and a chocolate malted too. The service was friendly and casual, but worth the trip for anyone who would like to enjoy a blast from the past. Monique had the BLT and it was as good as any you can get, Ben, Alek, and I had the cheeseburger with fries, mine was great, and Ben reported the same, with finishing his way before I could mine. Bryan got the daily special of fried chicken strips with cream gravy, curly fried potatoes, and cornbread. Monique had the three layer yellow cake with chocolate icing and it was moist and flaky besides being quite tasty too.

It is a little after two o’clock in the afternoon, and we start back out on the road for the cabin, about a 25-minute drive from Boone, and we finally arrive around 2:45 surrounded by snow. The last 250 feet or so of the driveway to the cabin was still partially covered with snow and after several failed attempts at driving up the steep snow covered slope, we decided to carry and hike our bags up to the cabin. At one point of entering the cabin, we thought we had locked ourselves out with the key on the dinner table, but the doors stayed open when shut so another mishap diverted. This was our first unplanned feat.

After settling into the cabin, I started up a batch of pizza dough by hand and got it proofing in the oven, then we took to the outdoors for our first snow fun, walking, sliding, and making snow angels while we watched the sun set behind the frosted mountains. I will submit a separate pizza recipe posting as the first part of my segment with this week of planned contributions to the CCR blog. Oh, and just one more tid bit if adventure, Bryan saw a small mouse run over the kitchen counter and then behind the refrigerator just before bedtime. We moved all the foodstuffs from the counter and into all the cabinets for good measure after the little rodent sighting.

The Dish Network satellite television would only pick up all the infomercial channels and a few “free” channels, such as NFL Network and Hallmark Channel.  While we did not go to the cabin to watch television, it would have been nice to put on the Weather Channel or local news for updates on the impending weather conditions.

Day 2, Thursday, 12/24/09, Christmas Eve

After a breakfast of croissants and an Italian sausage egg scramble I decided the next order of business would be to find a way to get the van up the top of the driveway.

With the van located 250 feet below the cabin I decided to take it upon myself to find some way to clear the driveway of snow and ice so we could park closer to the back door. After some scrounging around, I found some loose floorboards in the utility room, which ended up making for a very useful, albeit not as productive way of scooping ice and snow from the roadbed. It took the five of us about two and a half hours to clear the 250+ feet of 10% slope driveway Christmas Eve morning. Now, this might be nothing for all the northern folk who deal with snow for months out of the year, but for this green snowbird, it was quite the adventure and feat to shovel snow with makeshift shovels and such. I finally was able to drive the van up to the cabin before lunchtime. That was our adventure for day 2.

We skipped lunch and played in the snow for several hours making use of the same floorboards as sleds and going down the one slope just across from the driveway and below the cabin.

For dinner, I prepared the Shrimp and Grits recipe since both Bryan and Alek had never been treated to this Carolina specialty.

No mice were sighted this day! Dish TV is still out, moreover, we called them and they were “working on it”, seems that the receiver lost its authorization, whatever that means.

Day 3, Friday, 12/25/09, Christmas Day

Christmas morning was Croissants again with some leftover bacon and then we opened a few presents that we brought along for the cabin. With no cell phone reception and limited texting, we were finally able to get family to contact us through the cabin’s land line phone later in the day. We did have Internet access and sent out several emails as well. Nevertheless, after breakfast and the presents I took my shower and then proceeded to start up with the Christmas dinner preparations of heating up the smoked turkey, smoked leg of lamb, set up the corn casserole, rice, peas, and the bourbon sweet potatoes. I also started a lamb stock with the bone for making the gravy. I will submit separate recipes for the smoked turkey, smoked leg of lamb, corn casserole and the bourbon sweet potatoes later on in the week on the CCR blog. .  I did find a good recipe for Jell-O shots and proceeded to make several batches of these over the next few days. Monique made her key lime pie and a batch of rice crispy treats too. I will post recipes of the pie and Jell-O shots too.

Once everything was ready, I started carving the turkey around a quarter after noon, and just about had everything ready when the electricity cut out. Luckily, everything was done with the cooking and the cabin has many windows to let in the sun light so Christmas dinner went off as well as could be expected. We found out later that an ice storm had passed through western North Carolina and cut power to 25,000 customers. In addition, luckily for us the power was restored about five and half hours later, just as the sun had started setting behind the horizon. Another day with a new adverse adventure!

The mouse was sighted again, this time on the lower level of the cabin near the utility room. He ran under the water heater and disappeared again into the nether regions of the cabin. Still no Dish TV, but NFL Network still works.

Day 4, Saturday, 12/26/09

Early in the morning I heard rummaging coming from some bags in the bedroom closet, must have been our resident house mouse looking for tasty morsels.

Leftovers were eaten for the remainder of our stay and I made another batch of Jell-O shots with Parrot Bay rum.

We played in the snow for most of the day with our makeshift sleds, with about ten acres of country side to play in our own little winter wonderland it was a real treat to spend the day in the snow as a family. It was the most time we had ever spent in the snow, Monique was like a little girl, “…just one more time…I want to slide down the hill just one more time!” This was heard at least four times, however, it was a blast and we really had a great day.

It is about seven o’clock and no major unusual events occurred….until we were packing up the kitchen for our departure the next day, when all of a sudden there is a knock on the front door. Turns out that the owner of the cabin told a friend of his that the cabin would be available and said they were scheduled to arrive on Saturday. We took in their eight children for about an hour or so as they worked on turning around their four vehicles and a trailer loaded with ATV four-wheelers and such and headed to another cabin. After speaking with the property manager, turns out they were supposed to arrive on Sunday.

After about two hours of playing host to four families from Miami, we finally settled into watching a DVD movie.

The mouse was sighted again in the lower level hallway, Dish TV has only infomercial channels now, seems the “free” deal ended.

Day 5, Sunday, 12/27/09

Monique screamed and we both jumped out of bed around 6:30 in the morning, the mouse had crawled up her arm and was staring up at her. We proceeded to pack up all our belongings and left the cabin within an hour without breakfast or coffee for that matter. After the unexpected guest visits the night before and our unexpected wake up call from our furry friend, we decided our adventures would have to end sooner than expected. Check out is normally eleven, but we figured hitting the road early was a better idea.

Cracker Barrel for brunch and then we arrived home at one o’clock sharp. We finally got a good night sleep at home.