Let the Good Times Roll - Mardi Gras Party

On Saturday - Ryan and I threw a Mardi Gras Party! 

If you are new around here - Ryan and I lived in Louisiana from 2013-2017 so there was a lot of Mardi Gras in our recent past! This past weekend we would normally be going to parades and celebrating hard, but since we live in MA now, we wanted to bring a little bit of the Louisiana culture home to our Massachusetts friends... and what better way to do that then with a Mardi Gras Party!

Mardi Gras last year! 

We wanted the party to be focused around the food since that is a big part of Louisiana's unique-ness! We bought a HUGE cast iron pot - and I am pretty sure it is Ryan's new favorite kitchen gadget!

 

Our Menu: 

Jambalaya

Lobster Pies

Natchitoches Meat Pies 

Kings Cake

 

We decided to buy the Kings Cake straight from Louisiana even though we probably could of made one ourselves.... just more authentic this way! Joe Gambino's bakery in Metairie, LA delivers all over the US so we bought one from there and boy did it bring back memories!

 

Saturday Morning we got up around 8:00am and started chopping vegetables for the jambalaya and the meat pies. Jambalaya takes about 5 hours to cook and the meat pies take about 2 so we wanted to have everything ready to go! 

Ryan was the Jambalaya master...

And I was in charge of the meat pies!

 

 

I also made some chocolate cupcakes with green, yellow and purple (mardi gras colors) frosting! I made little Fleur De Lis toppers to give them some additional color and flare! 

 

If you have ever been to New Orleans - one of the popular drinks is called a Hurricane! Ryan found the recipe and we had "Category 5 Hurricanes" - these things were TOXIC!!

 

We had gone to Party City to buy Mardi Gras beads to give out to our guests and found this big wall sign of Bourbon Street... we couldn't resist! 

 

So that was our little Mardi Gras Party! It was a blast and we might make it a yearly tradition!