Shrove Tuesday
The last day before the beginning of Lent on the Gulf Coast that once belonged to France, it is Mardi Gras, “Fat Tuesday”: Laissez les bon temps rouler!
It was first celebrated in Mobile, Alabama, but the big show these days is in New Orleans, and it is a holiday in the state of Louisiana, because people wouldn’t show up for work anyway, so why fight it.
The tradition is to serve King cake, which is a circle of cinnamon bun dough with a white frosting on top sprinkled with sugar colored purple, gold, and green. If that weren’t bad enough, they put the figurine of a baby in the dough, and whoever finds it in their piece is supposed to be lucky. Actually if you find it and don’t choke on it, I guess you are lucky. You should use a small ceramic figurine, as some of the cheap plastic versions melt in the oven [Yummy! Oh, as both types are probably made in China, you will get you lifetime allowance of heavy metals regardless].
2 comments
Do they ever put the “baby” in crackers? A week or so ago, I bit down on a Triscuit and encountered a rock (or something equally hard) which put a dent in a splint attached to the back of my lower teeth, leaving a small piece of metal projecting from the splint into the area beneath my tongue. You can imagine how lucky I feel… sooner or later it’s going to mean a trip to the dentist.
Probably just a bit of a counter top in the Chinese flour that wasn’t ground fine enough.