How did you celebrate Fat Tuesday this year? I celebrated by having a Cajun food baby thanks to my fantastic friend David and his authentic cooking.

My friend David spent a year of college going to Tulane and thus is the resident expert when it comes to NoLa flavor. David also enjoys fancy hotels, fried chicken and theme parties. No wonder we’re friends! This year he invited people over to celebrate Fat Tuesday with some tradition eats!

Corn bread. David used a simple recipe but improved upon it by adding melted cheese and jalapenos on top! We all know how I feel about adding cheese to anything/everything. The bread was warm and delicious.

While corn bread is an essential to any delicious southern meal, the star of this show was the jambalaya:

I believe this recipe came from the New Orleans School of Cooking but I might be wrong about it. It had all my favorite ingredients: Shrimp, sausage, rice, and seasonings. David made sure to apply a liberal sprinkling of authentic Cajun seasoning, Tony Chachere’s. It was like a lightly spicy salt. I loved this dish and I definitely want to steal the recipe from him. It would be a great thing to cook and then freeze and eat throughout finals season when I’m too lazy to cook. I had two large servings, it was that good!

David also had plenty of authentic entertainment at the party. As you can tell we had fun with masks. He also had some New Orleans jazz playing in the background and our friend Vivi was handing out beads, although you could get them for calling her pretty. I’m not sure it that part jibes with Marti Gras, but hey, what ever works, right? Overall, it was a really nice party and the food was the star of the show.

I had a major Protestant fail yesterday as I didn’t go to church to get ashes. Oh well, can’t win them all. Being that I am a Protestant, we’re pretty chill about lent and what lent entails. No fasting or not eating meat for me! Also, in lieu of “giving something up” I like to “take something on”. This year I’ve decided to spend the next 39 days being more self loving and self supporting. I am definitely my own worst critic. I tend to set very high standard for myself and when I fall short I beat myself up about it. That is a habit I have aimed at curtailing with my New Year Goals but I really want to take the next 40 days to focus in on self support and self love.

Do you participate in lent? If so, do you follow the traditions? I feel like most of my friends aren’t Catholic/practicing Christians and don’t participate in lent, which is actually kinda cool! Not that there is anything wrong with it, I just love having an eclectic group of friends from different backgrounds.