Collop Your Friends -- It's Mardi Gras!
For the next few days, I'd really appreciate it if you'd pepper my wife with letters, phone calls and e-mails bearing this demand: "Laissez Les Don Temps Rouler!" (Which is French for "Let The Don Times Roll!" Or "Let Lester Wear Temporary Rulers!" Something like that.)
If enough of you do this, she might cave in and approve my request for an all-expense paid trip to New Orleans, where I and a crack investigative team of five or six of my buddies will provide up-close and personal reports from Mardi Gras 2006. Or at least the parts we remember.
In planning my trip, I've learned there's much more to Nawlins' famed Mardi Gras celebrations than the gaudy costumes, lubricated revelry, and exposed flesh that I promise to investigate up-closely if my wife ponies up those travel expenses.
For one thing, Mardi Gras is merely the last day of a weeks-long "Carnival," spanning the period between the Epiphany and Lent. And there are lots of wholesome, family-friendly diversions that get hardly any national media attention: cotillions, dog parades, treasure hunts, and lively games of "Pin the Tail on the FEMA Bureaucrat."
Of course, with 40 days of Lenten abstinence looming, there's also lots of emphasis on rich foods, most of them so fat-laden that your cholesterol has risen 15 to 20 points just by reading this sentence about them.
A particularly popular treat, first created in Austria, is "Faschingkrapfen" (also know as the "Mardi Gras Doughnut"). I suppose they're delicious, but then they'd better be, what with a name that sounds like an ailment of the lower intestine.
The day before Lent goes by many names besides Mardi Gras: It's "Shrove Tuesday" in England; "Butter Day" in Russia; and in Poland, "Tluste Dni," which means "Sure, I'll have one more Faschingkrapfen."
In many European countries, the day is called "Pancake Day," thanks to all sorts of traditions involving pancakes. I read a detailed article about this, written by a professional food personality known as "Mr. Breakfast." Of all the things I learned in this article, the most fascinating was that there is a guy actually making a living as Mr. Breakfast.
But I'll withhold any snarky comments about him. After all, he's lobbying the U.S. government to establish Pancake Day as a legal federal holiday. Really. And anyone trying to provide us another reason to skip work deserves our respect.
Other pre-Lenten days also have special nicknames. For example, the Monday before Lent is known in the northern counties of England as "Collop Monday." Collops are a mixture of sliced meat and eggs, fried in butter, and I sure hope they're tasty, what with a name that sounds like an ailment of the upper intestine.
There are countries where the citizens don't partake of Faschingkrapfen or collops, but it's not because they have something better to eat. In Iceland, where Mardi Gras is called "Bursting Day," they eat salt meat and peas. And in Estonia, families consume heaping portions of split-pea and ham soup. (Interestingly, every Estonian child happily gives up the same thing for Lent: split-pea and ham soup.)
In the Canadian province of Newfoundland, pancakes are big Mardi Gras treats (quick, notify Mr. Breakfast!). They're baked with a "surprise" hidden inside, usually something valuable like a ring, a coin or a framed copy of one of my columns. Imagine chomping a mouthful of pancake with one of these little treasures inside, and you'll understand why the day after Mardi Gras is known throughout Newfoundland as "Oral Surgery Day."
If you've read this far and feel like you haven't learned Faschingkrapfen about Mardi Gras, then remember: force my wife to send me to New Orleans! Or Old Orleans, or Estonia, if need be, to uncover fresh and interesting Mardi Gras info.
Otherwise, next year's Mardi Gras column will again be about something I can research from my glamorous basement, such as all the fascinating Mardi Gras-related stuff available on e-bay. Just today I discovered a seller named "bchpartygirl" offering a pair of "Mardi Gras Gold Coin Condom Jewelry Earrings" with this comforting sales pitch (I swear on a stack of collops this is true): "They're very pretty and have never been used!"
TakefiveT5@yahoo.com
If enough of you do this, she might cave in and approve my request for an all-expense paid trip to New Orleans, where I and a crack investigative team of five or six of my buddies will provide up-close and personal reports from Mardi Gras 2006. Or at least the parts we remember.
In planning my trip, I've learned there's much more to Nawlins' famed Mardi Gras celebrations than the gaudy costumes, lubricated revelry, and exposed flesh that I promise to investigate up-closely if my wife ponies up those travel expenses.
For one thing, Mardi Gras is merely the last day of a weeks-long "Carnival," spanning the period between the Epiphany and Lent. And there are lots of wholesome, family-friendly diversions that get hardly any national media attention: cotillions, dog parades, treasure hunts, and lively games of "Pin the Tail on the FEMA Bureaucrat."
Of course, with 40 days of Lenten abstinence looming, there's also lots of emphasis on rich foods, most of them so fat-laden that your cholesterol has risen 15 to 20 points just by reading this sentence about them.
A particularly popular treat, first created in Austria, is "Faschingkrapfen" (also know as the "Mardi Gras Doughnut"). I suppose they're delicious, but then they'd better be, what with a name that sounds like an ailment of the lower intestine.
The day before Lent goes by many names besides Mardi Gras: It's "Shrove Tuesday" in England; "Butter Day" in Russia; and in Poland, "Tluste Dni," which means "Sure, I'll have one more Faschingkrapfen."
In many European countries, the day is called "Pancake Day," thanks to all sorts of traditions involving pancakes. I read a detailed article about this, written by a professional food personality known as "Mr. Breakfast." Of all the things I learned in this article, the most fascinating was that there is a guy actually making a living as Mr. Breakfast.
But I'll withhold any snarky comments about him. After all, he's lobbying the U.S. government to establish Pancake Day as a legal federal holiday. Really. And anyone trying to provide us another reason to skip work deserves our respect.
Other pre-Lenten days also have special nicknames. For example, the Monday before Lent is known in the northern counties of England as "Collop Monday." Collops are a mixture of sliced meat and eggs, fried in butter, and I sure hope they're tasty, what with a name that sounds like an ailment of the upper intestine.
There are countries where the citizens don't partake of Faschingkrapfen or collops, but it's not because they have something better to eat. In Iceland, where Mardi Gras is called "Bursting Day," they eat salt meat and peas. And in Estonia, families consume heaping portions of split-pea and ham soup. (Interestingly, every Estonian child happily gives up the same thing for Lent: split-pea and ham soup.)
In the Canadian province of Newfoundland, pancakes are big Mardi Gras treats (quick, notify Mr. Breakfast!). They're baked with a "surprise" hidden inside, usually something valuable like a ring, a coin or a framed copy of one of my columns. Imagine chomping a mouthful of pancake with one of these little treasures inside, and you'll understand why the day after Mardi Gras is known throughout Newfoundland as "Oral Surgery Day."
If you've read this far and feel like you haven't learned Faschingkrapfen about Mardi Gras, then remember: force my wife to send me to New Orleans! Or Old Orleans, or Estonia, if need be, to uncover fresh and interesting Mardi Gras info.
Otherwise, next year's Mardi Gras column will again be about something I can research from my glamorous basement, such as all the fascinating Mardi Gras-related stuff available on e-bay. Just today I discovered a seller named "bchpartygirl" offering a pair of "Mardi Gras Gold Coin Condom Jewelry Earrings" with this comforting sales pitch (I swear on a stack of collops this is true): "They're very pretty and have never been used!"
# # #
TakefiveT5@yahoo.com
posted by Don Stuart at 11:52 AM
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