It's Carnival Time...

Today is January 6, Twelfth night, the day of Epiphany—the celebration of the day the wise men made it to see the Christ child. It’s the first day of Carnival, that marvelous something-for-everyone time leading up to Mardi Gras. In New Orleans, the Phorty Phunny Phellows open the season with a street car ride on the St. Charles Avenue line.

While living in New Orleans I never made it out to see the PPP, but in our home we had our own traditional Twelfth Night party where we would eat crawfish etouffee (made from a Times Picayune recipe that tasted just like the crawfish etoufee at the Piccadilly), eat king cake and read Mardi Gras poems from “Throw Me Somethin’ Mistuh”, all while wearing our favorite beads from parades carnival seasons gone by.

“Throw Me Somethin’ Mistuh” is a collection of thirty poems by New Orleans poets Brod Bagert and Charlie Smith about the Mardi Gras experience, from the first bite of king cake to an ash Wednesday trip to the cathedral altar.

We continue to honor the day, despite living in Middle Tennessee. We’ll actually have our full celebration on the weekend, since January 6 this year falls on a Tuesday which is also scout night; we’ll also probably have shrimp creole, since the only crawfish we could find at the Publix was from Spain and cost $14 a pound.

But at breakfast this morning we did pull out the book of poems and I read our favorite, while the Wife, the Girl and the Boy recited it from memory so that together we sounded like Catholic school children reciting the “Our Father”:

It ain’t no surprise she got the doll,
She ate two-thirds the cake.
I said, “Please Aunt Louise, save some for us,
Slow down, for goodness sake!”

She said,“Baby, I can’t help myself.
These cakes was good from the start,
But now there’s icing on the top
And cream filling in the heart.

Yep!
She got that doll fair and square.
Nope!
She didn’t feel or poke.
But she ate so fast we was all scared
Poor Aunt Louise would choke.

The book is out of print, but there are a few used books listed for resale at Amazon. For more about the authors, see their websites—Brad Bagert and Charlie Smith.

May some kingcake come to you.