The Gloor clan really doesn’t need much of an excuse to party. You would think with all of the birthday celebrations as of late, the family would be ready to spend a weekend staring at the television without one tortilla chip or bratwurst or niece or aunt or cousin in sight.

Well, instead we found a reason to party that didn’t include a single tortilla chip or guacamole dip, and there was nary a hot dog bun in the vicinity. After all, Lent is approaching, which means….

MARDI GRAS!!!

Some explanation is necessary, since many of you know that Mardi Gras is French for Fat Tuesday, and Fat Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday, and Ash Wednesday isn’t until next week. Here’s the thing. None of the family that works for a living can actually celebrate on Fat Tuesday since, in order to work for a living, they have to actually, well, work. It makes sense to have it the weekend before. But next weekend didn’t really work for several reasons. First, I will be in Denver visiting kids and grandkids. Second, my brother Dave and Bill will be at the Phoenix NASCAR race on Sunday. Third, there is – yes, you guessed it – a conflicting birthday celebration for my great niece MacKenzie Rose who is turning 8.

But if you want a party, you have a party. And son of a gun, we had big fun at Bec’s house on Sunday afternoon at her second-annual Mardi Gras party.

It was New Orleans all the way. Bec made muffalettas as appetizers (and you know it’s going to be some kind of good food if muffalettas are the opening act). Muffalettas are yummy sandwiches made with a delicious olive salad and a variety of meats such as Genoa salami and ham, with provolone and Swiss cheeses. Seriously? How can you possibly go wrong?

I made the jumbalaya, using Erik’s recipe featured a couple of weeks ago on this blog. The star of the show was Erik’s gumbo made with chicken and sausage. Gumbo starts with a roux (a mixture of flour and some kind of fat). For it to have that characteristic wonderful rich flavor, the chef has to nurse the roux to a perfect deep brown color without waiting a minute or two too long for it to burn. Comes with experience, and it was magnificent.

Bec offered maque choux, sort of creamed corn on steroids and another traditional New Orleans offering. For dessert she made a King’s Cake. Traditionally, a King’s Cake (another New Orleans Mardi Gras standard) is sort of a coffee cake, dyed purple, green, and yellow. Somewhere inside the cake is hidden a little plastic baby. The person whose piece hides the baby has good luck for the next year. Bec hid no plastic baby inside the cake, so we all had the good luck of not being in danger of choking.

The best part about these gatherings is the sound of the kids  – now totaling 11 – playing together. Well, admittedly three-month-old Faith and one-month-old Lilly didn’t play a lot; they mostly slept. Sometimes they divide up by age, but this time the kids divided up by gender. The girls disappeared around the side of the house where they were barely seen most of the afternoon. They eventually emerged, bearing a Rainbow-Loom-manufactured rope that measured somewhere in the vicinity of 100 feet! Well, I might be exaggerating, but it took a lot

of little plastic rings to make that rope. The boys mostly tossed the football and the colored bead necklaces, many of which ended up in Bec’s tree. We thought they might remain there until next Mardi Gras, but we were able to get them down. Well, to be honest, it was Kacy’s husband David, who TOWERS over the Gloors (not hard to do), who got them down so Bec’s homeowners association didn’t have to get involved.

So, as my title indicates, “Let the good times roll!”

King’s Cake, adapted from Mix and Match Mama’s 100 Bundt Cakes, # 99 Rainbow Cake

Ingredients

1 box of white cake mix

2 small boxes of instant vanilla pudding

½ c. vegetable oil

1-1/4 c. water

4 eggs

Purple, yellow, and green food coloring

1 can vanilla frosting

Purple, yellow, and green sprinkles

Process

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Grease a 10-in bundt pan.

In a mixing bowl, combine cake mix, puddings, oil, water, and eggs with electric mixer. Separate your batter between 3 bowls, making sure that the bowls decrease in amount of batter as you down (so bowl #1 should have the most batter, bowl #2 a little less, bowl #3 the least.

Using your food coloring, make each bowl a different color. Stir well, making sure to incorporate the color throughout the batter.

Taking bowl #1 (the bowl that has the most batter in it), spread that evenly across the bottom of your prepared bundt pan.  Then take bowl #2 and spread the batter across the top of the first layer. Repeat with bowl #3.

DON’T SWIRL THEM TOGETHER. YOU WANT THE COLORS TO BE SEPARATE.

Bake 40-45 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Let cake rest on counter in pan for 10 minutes. Then invert cake onto serving plate to finish cooling. Frost cooled cake with your vanilla frosting and top with sprinkles.

Nana’s Notes: As I said, the recipe is adapted from a slightly different cake that used more colors. Also, as I mentioned, traditionally a King’s Cake has a plastic baby in the batter to be baked into the cake. It’s a fun tradition as long as you don’t have 11 children, all of whom want the piece with the plastic baby, resulting in fist fights. And, by the way, we have decided Mardi Gras is a wonderful excuse for a party.