"Mardi Gras" news and stories

• Whether you call it Mardi Gras or Shrove Tuesday, pancakes are a mainstay of the day.
• When you're down South, you're going to drink sweet tea. Where's the best spot in Atlanta?
• Or, for a different type of beverage, check out the Brew Your Cask Off fest on March 5.
• Celeb chef Eli Kirshstein is joining forces with Spider-Man. (If only he could do something for the broadway show...)

• Happy Valentine's Day! Chocolate desserts cure everything, you know.
• Next holiday: Mardi Gras. Ready for king cake?
• Speaking of French-inspired traditions, try knocking back a French 75.
• One can always use a refresher course in chicken and dumplings.

• Need a king cake for Mardi Gras? Here's the city's royal roundup.
• ... Or perhaps you'd like to make your own king cake.
• Where's the beef? Nowhere to be found during Lent, so eat up now.
• Speaking of meat, here's a classic recipe: tournedos Provencale, a Commander's Palace staple in the 1970s.
• After Ash Wednesday, whip up this Thomas Keller-inspired macaroni gratin recipe. Lent will fly by.

A Minnesota native is challenging the accepted orthodoxy surrounding Mardi Gras moon pie throws in Mobile, Ala.

While the city's Chamber of Commerce insists the tradition is rooted in a group of Mobile mothers' concerns for the safety of their children, who were getting beaned by sharp-edged Cracker Jack boxes, researcher Emily Blejwas counters there's no evidence suggesting a bunch of well-meaning women introduced the soft, round cookies.

"I've heard several different stories," says Blejwas, a recent Auburn grad who's writing a book about Alabama food history. But most of the stories have the same punch line, she adds: "Everyone I talked to said, 'After I threw a moon pie, the next year, everybody threw them.' "

Younger Mobilians tell the story with a slightly different twist, says Blejwas: "They say, 'For sure, my dad threw the first pie. That's a fact.' "

When Mobile city councilman Fred Richardson last year revealed he'd spent $9,000 of taxpayer's money on a 12-foot-tall mechanical banana moon pie, there were some skeptics. But Harriet Sharer of the Mobile Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau says the crowd at the city's first "MoonPie Over Mobile" celebration silenced all doubters.

"Some people thought people would make fun of us," Sharer recalls. "But we had 15,000 people show up and it's going to grow exponentially."

Mobile recently upped its commitment to the dessert, making the MoonPie hoist the Southeast's preeminent New Year's Eve celebration and dedicating an additional $25,000 to marketing the event. This year's festivities include live music, a gala ball and the slow rise of the snack.

"Everyone we knew does drops," Sharer says, explaining why Mobile's MoonPie defies New Year's Eve gravity. "Since the moon does rise, we decided to rise it up over the city."