This is a true story about a Mardi Gras custom:
Our very good friends lived about 75 miles north of New Orleans so we visited in the area several times a year for well over a decade.
One year we were there for a storytelling event the weekend before Mardi Gras started. Everyone was at the community college theater where the storytelling was taking place. I left the theater early so I could go to our host's house to help set the table etc., in preparation for a late-night party.
No one else was there when I arrived. As I got out the cups and plates etc. I noticed that someone had left a cake on the table while we were all gone. "What ugly purple and gold icing," I thought. (Remember, I come from Indiana and didn't know anything about Mardi Gras customs.)
Wanting to be helpful, I decided to cut the cake into squares, and I had made the first long vertical cuts and had started on the horizontal when a storyteller, and baker of the cake, walked through the door. With her loudest voice, "What are you doing?" she screeched. I was confused, holding the knife in the air, "Why, cutting this cake into serving pieces."
Needless to say, she took the knife away from me and firmly instructed me on the meaning of a King Cake, the special tradition surrounding its cutting, and that it definitely is NOT cut prior to the festivities.
Mimi
