Happy Fat Tuesday, everyone!

Though I’ve never been to New Orleans during the Mardi Gras celebrations, this time of year holds a special place in my heart for a couple of reasons.

For one, it brings back a lot of memories of a trip to New Orleans (in the summertime, though!) a few years ago (Pre-Katrina). A bunch of friends and I stayed in the French Quarter, and man.. what a crazy amount of culture is packed into one place! The sights, the sounds.. the food! Great times. I’d love to go back sometime, hopefully during the Mardi Gras celebrations. Sounds like a ton of crazy fun.

Anyway, more importantly, it reminds me of getting engaged to my husband. Sounds kinda weird, huh? It gets better. He proposed to me as the result of a very famous New Orleans sandwich – the Muffaletta!

He’d never heard of them before, but had a rabid love of olives. I remembered the delicious sandwich I’d experienced at Central Grocery in New Orleans, and decided that he HAD to try one. Mufalettas appear to be pretty hard to come by here in Minnesota, so I made him one, from scratch. He went out and bought my ring the next day! LOL.

So, in honor of Fat Tuesday, I’ve published my muffaletta recipe here. No guarantee that you’ll have the same sparkly results from serving it (it ended up being the most expesive sandwich he’d ever had, lol!), but if you like olives, I’m sure you’ll love it!