Happy Mardi Gras!

Mardi Gras History
It's because of the french and spanish catholic influences that Mardi Gras is celebrated in the southern states of the US. New Orleans is the most well-known place to celebrate it but there are the same traditions in cities of Alabama, Mississippi, and all the way to Pensacola, Florida. On March 2, 1699, the day before Mardi Gras, French-Canadian explorer Jean Baptiste Le Moyne Sieur de Bienville arrived at a plot of ground 60 miles directly south of New Orleans, and named it "Pointe du Mardi Gras". He established New Orleans in 1718, and by the 1730s, Mardi Gras was celebrated openly in the city. In the early 1740s, Louisiana's governor, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, established elegant society balls, which became the model for the New Orleans Mardi Gras balls of today. The earliest reference to Mardi Gras "Carnival" appears in 1781. That year, the first of hundreds of clubs and carnival organizations formed in New Orleans. By the late 1830s, New Orleans held street processions of maskers with carriages and horseback riders to celebrate Mardi Gras. The two first Krewe were formed in 1856 and 1870. In 1872, to  honor a visiting Russian Duke, a group of businessmen introduced his family's colors, purple, green and gold as Carnival's official colors. In 1875, the Governor signed the "Mardi Gras Act," making Fat Tuesday a legal holiday in Louisiana, which it still is. Like the first krewes, most Mardi Gras krewes today developed from private social clubs with restrictive membership policies. All the parade organizations are completely funded by their members. So bascially it's way cool to have the opportunity to ride a float and throw beads to everybody else! All kind of other knick-knacks are also thrown to the kids. 

Parades start weeks before Mardi Gras. New Orleans is primarily well-know for its Endymion and Bacchus parades on saturday and sunday before Mardi Gras. Themes vary from a city to the other and year after year. Here in Baton Rouge, the main parade, much smaller than any New Orleans parade, takes place in the historic neighborhood of Spanish Town. Krewe members do not really wear masks or costumes like in other parades, but the rose color is a must for everybody. A few weeks before Mardi Gras, the carnaval organizers go, by night, to put up about a hundred wooden flamingos in the middle of the university lake. During the following days, Baton Rouge people turn up with small boats to adopt their own flamingo which they will proudly display on their porches or at their windows. As a result we can see flamingos everywhere on the front porches of this neighborhood's houses, all year long.

Mardi Gras in Cajun country
In rural villages around Lafayette, traditions are slightly different. The local event is called the "Courir de Mardi Gras". In cajun French it means the race of Mardi Gras, and it comes from old french rural rituals. Since it's the last day before Lent, the participants heartily eat and drink. The men of the village get out on horse backs in the morning, wearing costumes and masks to hide their identity, and go from house to house begging for ingredients to make the communal gumbo at the end of the day. Offerings go from an onion to a live chicken, which they'll have to catch. 
Personal advise: If you go see a Courir de Mardi Gras, make sure to have stuff to give away in your pockets in case one of them begs you to pass something... For lack of food for the Gumbo, a few coins, or a bottle of beer will do it. Otherwise you are taking the risk to have to get rid of something you didn't want to give, or to end up head upside down on their shoulders being spanked. I speak from experience. You have been warned, they are shameless...

Valentine's Day!

 I'm not gonna give you an rundown on Valentine's Day, even though that's hardcore around here. I thought I knew everything about this holiday in the US. The difference between France and the US is that here, Valentine's Day is not only a lovers day, it's an occasion for everybody to show ones love/friendship/affection for whoever you want! Between friends, from parents to kids, between kids at school (and please... in a very organized way), as Louison is explaining it so well in her blog article "Les Américains et le Love" (Read it if you can read french, it's really funny!). We wish each other a happy Valentine's Day, (Got 3 text from friends this morning already...), some offer cards to each other, etc... To me it's a little beyond belief, but after all, why not, you feel less lonely when you're single! The new stuff I've learnt this year, is that there's also a VGalentine's Day the day before Valentin's Day! What is that??

Explanation:

1: "Gal" is a casual word for "fille", it's actually an alteration of the word "girl".

2: Galentine's Day is the name of an episod from the serie Parks and Recreation. The story is that every February 13th, Leslie (Amy Poehler) and her girl friends leave their husbands or boyfriends home and go out to celebrate their friendship, girls celebrating girls. It seems like this fad comes from there. 

Anyway, last night a good friend of mine had invited me to join her and her other friends (so that means I made even more girl friends!) for my first Galentine's Day! I think I couldn't be more immersed in the American culture than that... lol

While waiting for Christmas...

That's it, tomorrow I'm taking off to France to celebrate Christmas with my family. It's the first time in five years! The schedule is gonna be tight. Two weeks to see everybody is very little time when nobody live in the same region. The suitcase is ready, gifts are wrapped, I'm pretty much ready. 

 
Before I leave, here are pics of some Christmas decoration aisles in Hobby Lobby, a big arts and crafts store where I spent about two hours, only to pick my wrapping paper. Good thing I was not getting a Christmas tree this year, or I would have spent the day there. And since in the US businesses do sales whenever they want, all the Christmas stuff was already 40% off even a month before Christmas. How terrific!

Peppermint candy canes are Christmas candies that are found in every shape and size. It's a very popular ornment theme as well.

Of course we're in America... There has to be adequate ornments for the big ass trees some people get. You can also see that kind of huge stuff hanging from front yard trees and such.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Below, some nutcrackers of questionable taste.

Although red, gold and silver are rightfully the most common colors, colors assortments know no bounds! 

The sock aisle...the choice is pretty amazing.

Each year, we have a little work Christmas party. We get together at our assistant director, who warmly welcome the twenty of us. Each of us put a gift under the tree for someone we randomly picked a few weeks before. During the preceding month, some of us have secretly filmed some skits to pretty much just make fun of each other. Sometimes in a kind way, but mostly in a blunt way... Humor is very dark and sarcastic at work. But that makes for 10 minutes of laughing our asses off when we all watch it together at the party! After that we gather around the tree and distribute the gifts.

My boss has always taken good care of me... as this picture shows. When all the wine glasses are broken from previous drunken parties, she makes sure the last one is for me! Every body else only have the right to drink out of plastic cups. Ha ha!

Christmas at Nottoway Plantation

A few weeks before Christmas, the Nottoway plantation lights up and welcome visitors for a Christmas celebration: tree lighting, carolers, fireworks, etc... Nottoway is the largest Antebellum plantation in the South. The word antebellum refers to the separatist movement time period, which led to the Civil War. The plantation is located on the west bank of the Mississippi, south of Baton Rouge. John Hampden Randolph, a very rich plantation owner had it built in 1857. He lived there with his wife and eleven children. There was up to 155 slaves working there, which made for the biggest plantation in the South (most plantation owners owned around twenty slaves). Nowadays, there is still sugar canes field around, but the slaves' cabins did not survive. The slaves that worked inside the house lived in the servant's section of the house. Those that worked in the fields lived outside in small wooden houses in the slaves quarters. The slaves quarters included a bathhouse, a hospital, a meeting house, and a gathering place that served as a nursery during the week (older women watched after the youngest children while everyone else worked in the fields), and a church on sundays. After the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, most of Randolph's slaves decided to stay and work for him, but finally as compensated free men and women. After that, the sugar cane business was not that profitable anymore. Randolph's finances dimished and the size of the plantation was reduced as well. He died in 1883 but his wife remained on the plantation until she was 70 years old, in 1889, when she decided, reluctantly to give up her home. It is said that on the last day in her home, she slowly walked  around the rooms, dressed in black as if mourning, and lovingly closed the shutters of the 200 mansion's windows. Nottoway was sold for $50,000. 
Sugar extraction and refining is still an important activity nowadays in the area. The Port of Greater Baton Rouge is surrounded, among others, with molasses factories, which are used in many products like deserts, candies, rhum, etc...

 

 

 

Little anecdote: Women had to use the stairs on the right while men used the left ones. Indeed if a man was to catch a glimpse of those ladies' ankles, it was considered so scandalous that he had the right to marry this woman without her consent!

Americans and Food

This is it, Thanksgiving is over! Even though we obviously don't have this celebration in France, we all have heard and know more or less about it. I try here to explain to my fellow people that it's kind of like a Christmas before Christmas, without the gifts; that it’s one of the most important Holiday in the country, and also THE day when it’s wise to avoid traveling - as it is followed by a 4 day week end, when most families get together, which generates a huge mess in airports and on the roads. This year might have been even more of a mess because of a storm that covered pretty much half of the country. As far as I’m concerned, I was comfy in Baton Rouge, without family, but with three or four different invitations at friends’ parents. I could have litteraly gone from home to home until I found the best food. I contented myself with this dinner: Deviled eggs, ham, turkey, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, macaroni and cheese, and sweet potatoes casserole:

I also explain them that originally Thanksgiving was a harvest celebration, then a Christian celebration during which North Americans would thank god for the good things received during the year. Now it’s a day off for everybody, the fourth Thursday of November, followed by Black Friday = The biggest and craziest sales day in the year. So if we recap… On Thursday we fill up our stomachs while being thankful for the simple things of life we already have, and on Friday we jostle one another to buy a new TV at unbeatable price. I love the irony here. In order to not sound like I’m a malicious gossip, I’m pointing out that a lot of Americans themselves are conscious of this little paradox… (See below)

Thanksgiving: the famous Turkey Day, or, the only day in the year when Americans eat better than the French. Aside from the turkey, there is usually cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes or sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, corn bread, apple pies, pecan pies. Those are among the classics. I also really liked caramelized brussel sprouts with bacon, and roasted garlic butternut squash with sage brown butter. Yummy. (I made the second myself, so proud, first time I had a butternut squash in my hands! I don't remember seeing that type of squash back in France.)

The first time I had fried turkey… this is also not bad at all!

Telling you about this great meal makes me want to talk about all the habits American people have in terms of food. It’s another world, you already knew that, but you might not know everything.

Dinner is ready!

First of all, it is common here to eat everywhere but on a dining table. Standing up, in the car, on the go, in front of the computer, on the couch. Meals at the table are often for dinner time only. And even then, the way of doing is very different: At home, dishes are not served in the middle of the table, but placed on the kitchen counter top, and people come and fill up their plate on their own. I remember my first impression: Ah that’s cool, there will be less to clear from the dinning table! But after a while it started making me almost sad. It’s not uncommon to see each and everyone get up from their seat with their plate as soon as it’s empty, not even waiting for everybody to be done. The whole affair is finished off in 10 minutes, clearly, it’s less convivial.

In France, every single meal is considered a mini social gathering. We never eat alone if there’s somebody else to eat with, neither at home, nor at work. This doesn’t exist for every day meals in the US, it’s appreciated, but not inevitable. At the office, even though we have a kitchen and a table for 6 or 8, a lot of my colleagues eat alone in front of their computer, without being called asocials. 

Always snacking!

In France having a meal is not only for the purpose of feeding oneself. We take our time, there’s a way to go from beginning to end: Starter, pause, discuss stuff, argue sometimes, main dish, pause again, cheese plate, pause, and the finale is dessert. In short, an every day meal has more importance than for an American. It seems like it is all botched here! It’s all done too fast. It must be said that a meal in America is made up of one single dish most of the time. The concept of first course – main course – desert does not really exist. For that matter the French word “entrée” is used as an equivalent of "main course", while it literally means "first course" in French! It misses the point completely! And the word “appetizer” is used for a dish served before the main dish, technically to open the appetite. Kind of like our French first course, except that considering the quantities of food served in the US, you’re not even hungry anymore after eating an “appetizer”, it totally defies its purpose! But that’s OK! You can just take your main dish in a “to go” box, leave your table in no time, and have a meal ready for tomorrow! After all it’s all about effectiveness here.

The action of eating does not evoke the same things for an American. I feel like French people have more respect for the food they eat. On a side note, you can clearly see that when you look at the differences of regulation in terms of what kind of chemical and other crap is allowed in food in the US compared to France! As a result, it’s like it doesn’t bother the American to eat anywhere at any time, or to eat in between meal times. No big deal. For French people it wouldn’t be very acceptable to do more than one thing while eating. Here it's totally tolerable: you eat and work, eat and walk, and even eat and drive… Yep!... And you mostly eat all sort of crap as you do all this, of course.

I’ve also noticed that American parents give food to their kids at every turn: when their kids are impatients, restless, tired, when they’re whining, or when they behave. “Here, since you behaved so well you can have an ice cream”. Because of that, food is perceived as a reward, a distraction, or something useful to calm down a kid that one wouldn’t succeed in making shut up. I’ve also seen children and teens randomly looking for food in the fridge at all hours of the day, without any parent saying anything about it. In short, everybody eat when they’re hungry, that’s it. I’ve never heard the English equivalent of our “Mange pas maintenant, ça va te gâcher l’appétit!” (“Don’t eat now, it’s gonna spoil your appetite!”) Never. So there you go, as much as it was annoying, years back, to have my mom limiting us to one slice of baguette with nutella or three cookies, and not four for the very regulated after school snack time… it is now quite pleasurable to be three sizes smaller than the local average, without even trying. 

Gastronomy is for snobby people

Despite these sad facts, it is possible to find good food and eat well in America. Pretty much only if you are lucky enough to be part of the middle and upper class anyway. Otherwise, really, it’s hard to have access to quality food, or it’s just not in everybody’s habits. I’ve read that Americans eat like children, in an impulsive way, always snacking, that their meal portions are too big. Generally speaking I can confirm that. I rarely see people here stopping to eat saying “I’m not hungry anymore”, but rather “I’m so full”. And their taste is often limited to what’s greasy or sweet. In France kids eat the same thing than the adults. You’re not asked what you like or don’t like. Here there’s always a kid menu, even at home sometimes, to avoid conflict and make it easier, and it’s usually not the most complex and refined… If you don’t like broccolis, that’s fine, we’ll give you Mac and Chesse instead. Be it at home or at school, how to savor and appreciate food (all food) is not part of the curriculum for the young little Americans, unfortunately.

Halloween

Halloween... you can feel it coming as soon as stores shelves are emptied of their back to school supplies... 2 months ahead. When shopping, it's impossible to miss the assortment of pumpkin scented candles, plush scarecrows and other lovely cheesy objects.

I made a list of this holiday's activities for my french folks: 

The Pumpkin Patch

In October, people start buying pumpkins in supermarkets or the few pumpkin patches that open here and there for the season. Most of the time, pumpkins have already been picked and laid on a field for people to conveniently choose from. There's often children activities proposed such as hay ride and petting zoo. Depending on what you want to do with it, you can choose from all sort of funny looking pumpkins: big, small, orange, white, etc... Little gourds are often used as decoration, and big ones will end up in front of the house before Halloween night.

Here are a few pictures from an afternoon spent at Ernie and Lynda's farm in Amite. Most pumpkins were already picked up. The "real" field was rather impracticable. Sorry for the power transmission line in the pic... not super glam, I know.

 

Pumpkin Carving
Then comes the time to carve... The trick here in Louisiana is to not do so too early so the pumpkins don't rot before the 31st. More than 3 days outside and you already have mold and flies all over them. It gets gross pretty quickly.
You can carve scary, funny or just cute little pumpkins. The famous Jack O'Lantern is the standard, but really there's no more standard, people carve whatever they want: spiders, bats, witches, etc...

Some cool pumpkins seen in magazines:

And in front of my house!:

The Corn Maze

Another pre Halloween activity: corn mazes. You have the child-friendly version during the day, and the haunted version at night, where dressed up kids and adults enjoy wholeheartedly freaking you out at each dark corner of the maze. Those pics are not mine. We made the trip one evening to the Cajun Country Corn Maze, the closest from here, and we never found it. Fail. Apparently, it wasn't open this year. Huge disappointment. I had never been to one and was looking forward to this. But well, I had to illustrate it anyway:

 

The Haunted House

Along the same lines, there's the whole array of haunted houses, from the kid friendly ones to the seriously scary ones. As it happens, we have here in Baton Rouge, the 13th Gate Haunted House, one of the best in the US, from what I've read in an article. Not for the faint hearted. I will quote the words of a couple of french friends that tested it for you: "We flipped the fuck out! The set is incredibly well done, very dark, actors do an amazing job playing scenes from The Chainsaw massacre to Jack the Riper via The Exorcist... Almost an hour in the dark without knowing what will jump in your face!" Anyway, I, personally, am too much of a sissy to try it out but I can confirm that there was a huge line in front of the building every week end since early October. 

From early October or even earlier, some people start to plan their Halloween costume. Everybody doesn't necessarily put much passion and effort into this. As far as I'm concerned, the last four years were rather boring, but this time, we did it right. Too many years of barely knowing what Halloween was about! It was nice to catch up! We spent the week end in New Orleans at a friend's house. A whole lot of tourists flock to the city for Halloween. To begin with, New Orleans already has a reputation for parties and creepy mystical stuff, so both together, it has to attract people! It is almost impossible to find a hotel room available for that week end. If you do find one, get ready to shell out $400.

"Trick or Treat"

October 31st: This year I was full on. I wanted to properly welcome the little monsters who would come knock at my door: My 4 or 5 pumpkins lit up on the porch, my little ghosts hanging from a branch, some candy... Tough luck, it rained all evening. Nobody came. So we headed to the bar, where the rain didn't ruin the party!