Socially Distant Mardi Gras

 About a year ago, in the before times, I celebrated Mardi Gras by going to a local Cajunesque place and having a po'boy before heading off the bar trivia (a Tuesday tradition back in the Old World).  It two weeks before the world came to a stop, but the indications were pointing toward impending disaster.

This year, I'm celebrating a socially distant Mardi Gras.  The first thing I did when I got up was to start cooking the holy trinity, a must for any Cajun or Creole cookery... basically what my grandfather would have recognized as a sofritto.  The plan was to make dirty rice for 'brunch' and put on a pot of red beans for dinner, served as is de rigeur, with white rice.

I have been puttering around the apartment, doing chores all day, and haven't done any deep dives into Cajun or Zydeco music, as I usually try to do.  It's hard to recapture the Mardi Gras high that I reached when I posted about the Louisiana standard Iko Iko.  I have been listening to an appropriate playlist, though, particularly a nice version of Iko Iko by the Neville Brothers, with the Dixie Cups, who had a hit with the song as schoolgirls back in the 1960s:

Now, the chores largely completed, and a blog post practically wrapped up, I;m thinking about thos Beans, simmering on the stovetop.  I've thrown some hamhocks and a couple of 'country spareribs' (actually cut from the shoulder, if I'm not mistaken) into the Dutch oven as well, and have andouille sausage to throw in toward the end of the cooking time.  

With the amount of beans I have cooking, it's a good thing that social distancing is a thing, because I am sure to be impossible to be around after dinner.