Mardi Gras 2011

Happy Mardi Gras!  We had a doctors appointment tonight with Bella (30.2 lbs, 3 ft .25 inches in case you were curious) so we couldn't celebrate Mardi Gras properly this evening, so we celebrated Lundi Gras instead.  Given that in New Orleans, Mardi Gras is more like a month long celebration and I've only been out on actual Mardi Gras day once, I think that it was sort of fitting.

So, Bella invited her BFF Xander and his family over so they could laissez le bon temps roulez! (let the good time's roll)  Requisite menu, particularly for a Monday evening, was red beans and rice.  I even broke my usual vegetarianism to eat a piece of anduille sausage, which I think isn't properly done unless sliced on an angle and seared before it goes into the beans.

And we also had the necessary accoutrement of cornbread, though it gave me a run for my money.  I've never had cornbread so dead set against being done.

This was pretty last minute, so I had no king cake specially shipped in or anything cool like that. In a moment of mommy genius, I realized that king cake was basically just cinnamon bread and icing, and instead got some canned cinnamon rolls and put them in a circle in a cake pan to cook.  I popped some green M&Ms in the bottom of one as a stand in for the baby (I wasn't really comfortable cooking plastic in my cinnamon rolls) and threw some icing on it when it came out.  Then the kids helped decorate the 'king cake' and the kitchen rug.  I wish I had just purple green and gold sugar...but again...we're working with what's in the cabinet here. I can't tell you how much I love this picture with Zoe getting in on the action.  You'll notice she was adorned with some beads as well.  Smart girl, that one!

The resulting cake was quite reminiscent of actual king cake, so that made me happy.

Happy Mardi Gras!

After the adults chose their pieces at random, I admit I cheated and checked and the special piece was still there, so I put that one on a plate for them and explained to them about how one piece was special.  We went with the froo froo version where the person who gets the special piece gets to be king or queen (or in our case king and queen) for the day since, if we leave it to these guys to buy the next cake, we won't be having cake for quite some time.  Then we cut it in half and sat back and watched the excitement when they realized they had the special piece.

All in all, a very successful night.  Now I just need to go do something about those sprinkles on the kitchen floor :)  

What do you think?  Have you ever thrown together a holiday celebration in a pinch?