Bon Odori Kori

Kori
Seattle Bon Odori, $3 

Obon is a Japanese summer-season holiday that sees droves of city-dwellers returning to their hometowns to gather in appreciation of their ancestors; it's a homecoming for both the living and the dead.  The traditional Obon activities range from temple ceremonies to the cleaning of graves to the festive group dances known as Bon Odori.  

In Seattle, Bon Odori takes place in the street outside the Japanese Buddhist Temple.  There are displays, speeches, performances, souvenirs, dozens of dances, and--for those who've worked up an appetite or a sweat--plenty of festival foods.  

On hot days the demand for kori shaved ice cups keeps Temple volunteers on the hop.  The huge blocks of ice (below, left) have to be sawn down to the right size to fit in the ice shaving machine, then the piles of snow are rapidly packed into paper cups (below, right) and decked out with the buyer's choice of syrups (top), condensed milk, or soupy red beans. 

Pan de Muertos

Pan de Muertos
Seattle Center vendor, $2

As befits a holiday commemorating the dead, Seattle Center's Dia de los Muertos celebration featured a range of fleeting pleasures, from sand paintings and dancing (below), to face paints and skeletal balloons, to sweet treats including calavera sugar skulls and sugar-dusted pan de muertos, or bread of the dead.

On altars built by school and civic groups (below center), pan de muertos of all sizes were laid out with other delicacies as an offering to visiting souls, but the bread is also eaten by the living as part of their holiday observance. Most pan de muertos is shaped in ways that hint at bones or skulls, or in the case of the bread above, three quick cuts and a twist turned a simple loaf into something quite suggestive of a dead body laid out for burial.

St. Joseph's Day

St. Joseph's Day

In many Italian communities, elaborate three-tiered altars are a key feature of St Joseph's Day celebrations. The altars are said to have originated in Sicily when a famine was cut short after prayers to St. Joseph resulted in a life-saving crop of fava beans.

St. Joseph's altars are piled high with a variety of foods including fruit, vegetables, Lent-appropriate fish, and dried favas. Because Joseph is the patron saint of pastry chefs, baked goods feature prominently: breads shaped like crosses or carpenters' tools (even the crumbs of which are considered to have the power to avert certain disasters), pastries resembling sacrificial lambs, fish, pinecones, or the Mater Dolorosa's sword-skewered heart. In some regions, St. Joseph's celebrants also enjoy zeppole, balls of fried dough topped with buttercream rosettes.

The photo above shows a St. Joseph's altar on display at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans, where the tradition arrived with Sicilian immigrants at the end of the 19th century:

"By 1910, forty percent of the population and 90% of the French Quarter was Italian, primarily Sicilian. At that time there were so many altars given in homes and churches that was impossible for one person to visit them all, even in one's own neighborhood. Instead another tradition developed: one could visit nine altars and at the ninth, one would make a wish and it would be granted. It is this thread of petition that runs through the tradition of the altar.

"Some altars are created out of a custom called questua, which means "searching" or "seeking". Instead of buying the ingredients and materials for the altar, one begs for them, further humbling oneself in an act of posverty. This recalls the impoverishment of the starving Sicilians who intially asked for St. Joseph's help. It also reminds the person on the questua of the purpose of the altar: to feed the hungry."

After the foods on the St. Joseph's altar have served their ceremonial purpose, they are distributed to the needy.

King Cake

King Cake Cupcake
Swiss Confectionery, $2

Although the Mardi Gras parades won't start until the day after I leave New Orleans, I timed my trip just right for indulging in one of Carnival's quieter traditions: eating king cake.

King cake season starts on Epiphany, the holiday celebrated on the twelfth night following Christmas when tradition has it that the Three Kings (or wise men) arrived in Bethlehem with their gifts for the infant Jesus. Between Epiphany and Mardi Gras, Catholics in many countries gather for king cake parties. The rich, sweet cakes are an efficient and festive way of using up luxurious ingredients such as sugar, butter, and eggs before the beginning of Lent.

Depending on where you find it, king cake can mean very different things. One old-fashioned version is made from a yeasted brioche dough with candied or dried fruit. Another, the "Galette des Rois," is a golden disc of butter-rich puff pastry filled with almond-flavored frangipane; those pictured above, in four party-appropriate sizes, were on display at La Boulangerie on Magazine Street.

In New Orleans alone there is considerable variation in king cakes, but the version most common today is akin to a cinnamon roll. The cake is usually formed into a ring, heavily drizzled with icing, and encrusted with sugar dyed in the Carnival colors: purple (for justice), green (faith), and gold (power). Many bakeries offer king cakes customized with your choice of fruit or cream fillings. The king cake boxes above, from the Croissant d'Or on Ursulines Street, list seven standard choices as well as a space for write-ins.

One key feature of the king cake is actually inedible: hidden somewhere inside is a small token. In the past, it might have been a dried bean, a coin, or a porcelain figurine. Today in New Orleans, the treasure is most likely to be a small plastic baby. The tradition probably derives from a the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia, when the hidden bean was used to select a man who would reign as Saturn incarnate before being sacrificed to ensure fertile crops in the following year. These days the guest who finds the baby in his or her slice of king cake has it relatively easy, being expected merely to host the next king cake party.

Although king cake is not difficult to make at home, New Orleanians have long been accustomed to buying them. Many of the region's bakeries also send cakes around the country and overseas. Owned and operated by the same family for three generations, Haydel's Bakery has built up a strong following. According to the company brochure, their king cake operation is the world's largest, and during the Mardi Gras season Haydel's ships "tens of thousands" of oven-fresh cakes. Each package is a party waiting to happen, with beads, doubloons and a bag of chicory coffee included with the cake.

I couldn't justify buying an entire king cake, but thankfully I had plenty of chances to sample. During the season, many coffee shops offer a free slice with a drink purchase, and some tourist shops that have nothing to do with food sell slices on the sly. It's also possible to get personal-sized king cakes (top photo), king cakes made from doughnuts or ice cream, or tiny king cake charms fashioned from silver or gold.

At any time of year, a tour of the float workshops at Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World includes a cup of coffee and a slice of Gambino's king cake (above). Gambino's is another one of the big players, shipping up to 4,000 cakes a day during the season. When I asked our guide if that meant that Kern's considered Gambino's to be the best, she cautioned me not to see it as an endorsement, but then added, "We go through a lot of king cake, and we do have a lot of choices about where to get it..."

For more on king cake sources, here's an article from New Orleans Magazine.

Fasnachts

Fasnacht/Fastnacht/Faschnacht/Fausnach/Fauschnaut/Fosnacht
Weiss, $4.49/12

Many Christian communities the world over spend the Tuesday before Lent eating and/or drinking themselves silly. Foods associated with Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras are generally heavy on sugar, eggs, milk, and fats--luxurious ingredients that shouldn't be eaten during Lent itself, but wouldn't keep for forty days. Cake and pancakes are typical fare, but in Pennsylvania-Dutch country, the Tuesday before Lent is Fasnacht Day, dedicated to the consumption of outrageously fatty holeless doughnuts of yeasted flour and potato dough.

It seems like a good omen that I should find myself in Kutztown, PA, on a day dedicated to pastry. Promisingly, the neighborhood convenience store sells fasnachts supplied by (in the clerk's words) "an old lady", but they are also fried in lard--a substance I have trouble eating unless I have no idea I'm doing so. They also sell out before 9am on Fasnacht Day, thus saving sleepy-headed me the trouble of making a difficult decision.

The local supermarket had a huge fasnacht display, including 6-packs and 12-packs, jelly-filled, glazed, and powdered. The box of "Old Fashion Fastnachts" was emblazoned with a day-glo orange sticker reading, "Get to know what good is", which firmly clinched my decision.

The fasnachts were golden-brown, dimpled, and as greasy as a bike chain; sugar was far down on the list of ingredients, just behind potatoes and well behind vegetable shortening. My friend Janna, a PA native, taught me to toast them carefully (the grease catches fire easily) and slather them with jam (in a cursory nod to nutrition I added a schmear of plain yogurt). The hot, crisp fasnachts were sinfully delicious, and substantial enough to cling to one's ribs for a full 40 days and nights.