Mardi Gras Musings

Today will be my usual Mardi Gras, which is fairly blah: get up, go to work, come home, go to bed. No festive drinks, no parade, no interesting foods.

In some ways, I'm more of a Shrove Tuesday kind of gal--but I don't celebrate that holiday usually either. One year I did make pancakes all by myself, which led to a good poem, but a lonely meal.

Today is Mardi Gras, and it's also Shrove Tuesday, which may lead some of us to ponder if these holidays have anything in common or how we came to have them. It's the day before Ash Wednesday, the day before Lent begins. The holidays of Shrove Tuesday, Carnival, and Mardi Gras have their roots in the self-denial of the Lenten season. These holidays are rooted in the fasting traditions of Lent and the need to get rid of all the ingredients that you'd be giving up during Lent: alcohol, sugar, eggs, and in some traditions, even dairy foods.

Mardi Gras and Carnival, holidays that come to us out of predominantly Catholic countries, certainly have a more festive air than Shrove Tuesday, which comes to us from some of the more dour traditions of England. The word shrove, which is the past tense of the verb to shrive, which means to seek absolution for sins through confession and penance, is far less festive than the Catholic terms for this day.

In the churches of my childhood, we had pancake suppers on Shrove Tuesday. I wonder if churches still do that in other parts of the country.

I wish I could say that I went to an early morning Shrove Tuesday pancake breakfast.  I did not.  I did not make any sort of festive bread; if you want an easy festive bread recipe, see this blog post--it's even got pictures.

I have a balsamic-brown sugar-shiraz syrup reducing on the stove.  I've gotten a head start on dinner--broccoli cut up, brown rice begun, sweet potatoes baking in the oven.  I will look forward to this food all day because I am a grown up without an Instant Pot or Mardi Gras plans.

I realize this post might seem a bit sad, but I want to remember that I've had a good morning.  I've gotten some work done on some poems, and I've enjoyed getting a head start on dinner, and I had a good spin class.

Happy Mardi Gras, everyone. May you have a nourishing, creative day.