Mardi Gras is here

 Today is Fat Tuesday, also known under the French name of Mardi Gras.  (in England they call it Shrove Tuesday and eat pancakes, but I don't go for that)   And in some places they have Carnivale, a longer party.  Either way, it's the day before Lent begins, and the idea is to party while you can, as the next day begins 40 days of deprivation.  I tend to go with the New Orleans approach, and that means traditional dishes from that area, as well as appropriate music and drinking.  Once upon a time this was French owned territory, so the Mardi Gras name has stuck.

Back in Sunday I cooked a batch of jambalaya, enough for a few days, and I've been enjoying it.  However, today is the true day for it, so this evening I had a brimming bowl of the stuff (see the above photo), a spicy rice dish (thus the write up here at Studio Arrabbiata) with andouille sausage, chicken, shrimp (crawfish don't appear in local supermarkets, close enough), an assortment of vegetables, and lots of spices.  Very tasty.  I used my last beer on Sunday, so on my way home from speech therapy, I stopped at a liquor store and picked up a six pack.  All beer costs a lot more than it did years ago, so I sprung for the extra buck to get the Anchor Steam Beer, a part of good times visiting a college friend decades ago.  (sure there was a war on, riots, burning police cars, people rounded up by the hundreds, and with the electric overheard wire buses, no way to know if the buses would even be running when it was time to go home, but it was a fun week)  

Of course there was music.  Proper for this would be some cajun and/or zydeco, and the 8 years I did a blues radio show meant that I knew the genre well and had some good stuff in my collection, but that collection is still in storage.  But everything is online if you know what to call it and where to look for it.  So I had Beau Jocques and the Zydeco Hi-Rollers, Dewey Balfa and the Balfa Brothers, and Rosie Ledet.  

The food, the beer, and the music got me through the day.  Lent begins tomorrow.

I also gave some thought to my next print.  Haven't done anything since I finished the third Robert Johnson print and took a proof of my last supermarket print.  I have no control over what happens with the former project, so I can't do anything more yet.  The plans for a JSAC print room are progressing, but I have nothing more to do with that, so what remains is doing a new print.   Don't have any specific ideas yet, but one will come to me eventually.