When I was an Italian American kid back in Brooklyn, Lent was a truly annoying time of the year. Meat was taken off the menu and fish was substituted. But being poor people, we were served this awful white fish of some sort or other, breaded and fried. It took a lot of ketchup to make that stuff palatable. When Camera Girl and I got married and set up our own household I was overjoyed to hear that her family wasn’t observant of the Lenten abstention. We two decided to go for the appearance over the substance. So, ashes on Ash Wednesday and beef, chicken and pork remained on the menu. And when Easter arrived, I put in a request for lamb. Now Camera Girl hates lamb so unsurprisingly it’s probably ham nine out of ten years and lamb once a decade.
You can see why for the last 45 odd years I’ve never concerned myself with Fat Tuesday. Eating a lot of bad food just to prepare myself for Lent has no rationale for me. But I told Camera Girl it was Fat Tuesday today and asked her what delicacy would be for dinner. She looked at me with naked disdain and said she didn’t know yet and not to expect anything great. This is why women shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Their judgement is clouded by a lack of strategic thinking. Here was her big chance to impress the boss (me) with her ability to think on her feet and all she can come up with is discouraging words. What was needed was a big bold flexible outlook. What I got was negativity and defeatism. Terrible.
So, I’m forced to imagine what I might want to get if Fat Tuesday were a real thing in my home. What comes to mind immediately is some kind of Cajun cuisine. Some kind of gumbo or jambalaya. Maybe something with alligator and craw daddies or whatever the hell they eat down there. And some kind of French pastries with espresso or some other type of strong black coffee with lots of sugar in it. I would sit out on my balcony as a parade of demented masked and costumed drug fiends shimmied by on their garish and outlandish floats and requested the crowd to throw beads at them for some perverse reason. I see myself wearing a white suit and brandishing an ornate walking stick as I regally wave a benediction at the inebriated bacchants. Possibly I would be entertaining a small gathering of the decadent descendants of the plantation aristocracy now reduced to the status of penniless moochers at my table. We would discuss the antebellum origins of the Mardi Gras and the rumors of voodoo and vampirism in the neighborhood. I would tut-tut derisively and hold court on the true goings on; the cult of Cthulhu down in the swamps and bayous and how a recently discovered stone idol proved that the re-emergence of the Cthulhu from his dream death at the bottom of the Atlantic was imminent.
Or something like that. Well actually, Camera Girl was pulling my leg. She’s making lentils and rice in pastiche, which in Camera Girl’s family is green peppers preserved in oil and vinegar. Which is one of my favorites and come to think about it is a pretty good meal for Lent. Well, forget about the whole Cthulhu thing and also the decadent plantation jazz. Maybe I’ll have some black coffee instead.