Mardi Gras

Since my dear wife's family are Cajuns, unlike most of our friends we try to celebrate Mardi Gras in our house. Our Mardi Gras celebrations are pretty simple, and family oriented. If we can get it in time we order King Cake for breakfast and we eat some sort of Cajun food for dinner followed by left over King Cake for dessert. My dear wife and children will round up some colorful Mardi Gras beads to wear to work and school.

Our King Cake didn't arrive until this afternoon, so we had it for dessert and will have some for breakfast tomorrow. My dear wife used to make her own King Cake, but then a few years ago we discovered Haydel's Bakery in New Orleans. Since then we have ordered our annual king cake from them. It is simplier for us, and the cake is delicious.

In the past our king cake arrived containing a samplier of some Cajun coffee (with chickory) which my dear wife just loves and the center of each cake has a small porcelain doll or figurine in it. This year our porcelain figurine was a FEMA trailer.

The little card that came with our very own FEMA trailer had this to say:

On Aug. 29, 2005, Louisiana faced the deadliest and costliest disaster in U.S. History. Despite life-changing challenges and hardships of Hurricane Katrina our people did not surrender. We dared to celebrate Mardi Gras 2006. For a moment, we escaped rebuilding reality. Mardi Gras is satire, so this edition commemorates the resilency of our human spirit to make merry, always.

In the past I have been critical of many residents and all the politicians in New Orleans and thier handling of Katrina. But it is nice to see a company who can memorialize their hardships in such a humorous manner. We will continue to order our King Cakes from Haydel's and I'm thinking we ought to find a couple more reasons to have King Cake throught the year instead of just during Mardi Gras.