JUST A SMALL TOWN (MARDI GRAS) GIRL

By Ali Rouse Royster, 3rd Generation

I appreciate the spectacle of the opulent New Orleans Mardi Gras, but I rarely participate in it. I love seeing pictures of my friends decked out in ball gowns and glow-stick necklaces, or at parades in costume and glitter, but I’m more than content to just watch. Even when I lived in New Orleans for a hot minute as a college freshman, I went to a few of the nearby Uptown parades but that was it. Here I am 20 years later, and I’d still rather appreciate those magnificent parades and balls from afar.

In my younger days, “big city” Mardi Gras to me meant Houma. But I love my small-town Thibodaux Mardi Gras. Our parades are held mostly on the two Sundays prior to Mardi Gras, and they’re daytime parades. In my post-college, prekid years, I had the best time watching our Thibodaux parades downtown. We’d go around 10am, sit on coolers, dance in the streets, bar-hop and mingle with the rest of town (this list sounds downright cuckoo in 2021, doesn’t it?), then go home to shower and sleep it all off around 7pm.

I appreciate my small-town Mardi Gras even more now that there are little children to keep an eye on, to make sure they aren’t putting anything caught from a float into their mouths (gross!) or running into the street — unless we see a friend underneath a mask and then, yes, we can run into the street but just for a second to get a good throw and only in a grown-up’s grasp! (I can see why this gets confusing for the kids.) I also very much appreciate my brother building a house on the parade route, even though he doesn’t really like parades! I feel like he moved there just for his nieces and nephews to have a safe, clean place to potty — really, what’s more important than that?

Now we’re into preschool parades — a rite of passage for all four-year-olds on the bayou! My handy hubby is in charge of float design and construction; he built a great airplane float for our oldest once. I’m pretty sure Krewe of Pre-K might be on hiatus this year with the rest of the world, but we’re still planning to build a float and have a Krewe of Kiddos in our driveway. My current four-year-old can pick the design and help her dad bring it to life — honestly, that was her older brother’s favorite part! Last year we had a parade with just our little fam-of-five, and my husband said it was his favorite parade of the season (like me, he can live without the big parades). My plan for 2021 is to do that driveway up right — along with our homemade float, we’ll have music, throws from the ghosts of Mardi Gras past — don’t you, like me, have a bag of Carnival stuff stashed somewhere? — and purple, green and gold clothes from the costume closet.

We’ll head to Rouses to get some candy and moon pies to throw too. And obviously, we’ll get at least a few king cakes! They’re not only great dessert, they’re the breakfast of champions — a surefire way to get little butts moving and off to school. But this is only permissible during Mardi Gras season! A sliver of king cake, a banana and a big glass of milk is a balanced meal, right? It is in Southeast Louisiana.

Last year, my oldest child asked if I made the king cakes at Rouses, and then asked if we could make one at home. He loves to discover how things work and how they’re made, which I love to foster, especially in the kitchen. So I looked up a kid-friendly recipe to try, but between parades and school parties we never got around to it. This year, we’ve got nothing but time, so I dug out my notes, and I’m both excited and nervous about making our very first king cake from scratch at home. (I will of course have a Rouses traditional king cake hidden in our pantry in case it is a disaster.) You just can’t have Mardi Gras without king cake!