FAT Tuesday!

Happy Fat Tuesday! I am excited because I have a co-worker/friend from New Orleans (she came out to CA after Katrina) and she ordered King Cake from a local bakery for everyone in the office. I have never tried it and didn’t even know about it until last year when NPR did a story on it 🙂

Here’s what Wiki says about it:

A king cake (sometimes rendered as kingcake, kings’ cake, king’s cake, or three kings cake) is a type of cake associated with the festival of Epiphany in the Christmas season in a number of countries, and in other places with Mardi Gras and Carnival. It is popular in Christmas season in France, Belgium and Switzerland (galette/gâteau des Rois), Portugal (Bolo Rei), Spain (Roscón de Reyes and in Catalonia called tortell), Greece and Cyprus (vasilopita) and Bulgaria (banitsa). In the United States, which celebrates Carnival ranging from Pensacola, Florida to East Texas, centered on New Orleansit is associated instead with Mardi Gras season traditions.

The cakes have a small trinket (often a small plastic baby, sometimes said to represent Baby Jesus) inside, and the person who gets the piece of cake with the trinket has various privileges and obligations.

This will be my last hurrah before Ash Wednesday tomorrow. I am giving up sweets and meats. This is going to be the hardest Lent in a long time! I remember when I was a kid I gave up candy and right after Ash Wed. we started our chocolate bar sale that lasted for weeks! The entire school and my house smelled like chocolate (which is obviously my fave!). It was torture. I froze a bunch of chocolate bars and ate them for months after Lent was over.

I am going to try and restrain myself from gorging on dark chocolate today and take it like a lady. No promises though 🙂