Mardi Gras Dinner



Last night we celebrated Mardi Gras at our weekly Sunday night dinner.  Joining us were the Dolans (from CSU) and Rebecca, a CSU student studying in Ireland. We didn’t have masks or beads or elaborate green-gold-purple feathered centerpieces, but we did have some good old N’Awlins-style food (with some English twists).



Emily's Shrimp and Grits

Emily made a delicious starter of shrimp and grits.  (I brought a big bag of Jim Dandy grits over with me in January.)  She tried baking the grits in muffin tins, hoping they would firm up into little cakes.  They didn’t.  We found out after dinner, when she went to remove the leftover grits from the muffin tins that we should have let them cool completely to solidify them into cakes (then we could have heated them in the microwave).  Regardless, the dish was yummy!



Callie's Red Beans and Rice

For our main course I made red beans and rice.  I had also brought over a bag of Camellia-brand dried red beans.  However, with 9 people for dinner, I also mixed in a bag of local dried kidney beans.  I had to cook the beans in 2 pots on top of the stove for about 6 hours since I was without my handy-dandy crockpot.  I couldn’t find andouille sausage (I should have looked at the Covered Market), so I bought some English smoked sausage which ended up being pretty bad.  Couldn’t find ham hocks either, but I used pieces of pork belly, and that was actually quite good!  All in all, it was very tasty – nice and spicy – and many folks had seconds.


Emily cutting her King Cake



Then for dessert, Emily did a variation on a king cake.  This was a babyless King Cake, since a plastic baby was nowhere to be found in Oxford.  She could have use a dry bean, but we didn't have any of those either (not dried ones). King cake is usually bread-like and dry, so Emily kicked it up a notch by adding custard as a filling (she rolled it up jelly-roll style).  She also ended up putting marzipan on it – topped with purple, green and yellow icing.  It was really good!

So Happy Mardi Gras, everybody.  Laissez le bon temps rouler!