- Ode. Oh,
- Tom, - You know, when we're doing this right now, for,
for those listeners who may be listening at any time ever,
potentially in the very far distant future,
it is now February in the year.
And so of what year? Of what year? Yes.
You wanna know what year it is, ?
I do, uh, it's 2024. Oh, cool. Yes.
I, I had no idea what year was honestly, .
I've lost all track of time
and, well, it's, it's a, um,
it's the, the time of the year.
What, what happens that might have a cultural impact
on us in this month,
- Not only this month, but right now,
as we speak about it, it, it's happening.
This la Miss Woo.
This is Mardi Gras time all down in Orleans anyway,
and we've got carnival in, in, in Rio coming up.
We've got Carnival in in Brazil.
We've got Carnival in different parts of the Caribbean.
Nice. This is the month, man.
This is when we're, this is coming up to lent.
We, you know, you gotta let it all out
because you can't do it once Lent comes and every Right.
You gotta pull it all together again. Okay.
So this is all leading up to, um, Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday.
- Fat Tuesday. Yeah. Fat Tuesday. Fat Tuesday.
- And I was reading something in the paper about this.
One of the phenomenons, one of the traditions of Mardi Gras,
certainly the, as it's done in, in New Orleans Yeah.
Is, uh, you know, it's a very, it comes out
of a very Catholic tradition in
- The Right.
- It's celebration before Lent. Right.
Um, but over the years, the, the, the, the, the importance
of king cake and the reason I mention
king cake, king cake, king
- Cake King, king cake.
That's hard to say. King cake King.
Well, there, everybody say it now. Here we go.
King, king cake. King
- Cake.
There's a Mardi CROs king,
and there's a Mardi Gra Mardi Gras queen Uhhuh, um,
and the connection of King and queen and,
and the three wise men,
- Uh, the three kings, three cows king,
three kings. So yeah.
- It's all coming together. Yeah. Right.
- Okay. Which probably may have been
kings may not in whatever. Yeah. Go
- Ahead.
So king cake Oh.
Is developed, it's a fairly newer tradition in,
in Mardi Gras where you have this,
it's a delicious pastry, and
- It's, it's this - Huge cake.
It's like a crawler,
but it's, it's like a, a massive crawler.
- A giant crawler
- .
Giant crawler. Yeah.
And it's, it's, um, covered in, in, in this, um,
- It's a king size crawler.
- Yeah, - Exactly. Yeah.
- See a frosting of three different colors, uh, purple,
gold, and green, which are the Mardi Gras colors.
- Okay. Yeah. - And, um, and inside you cut it,
and it could be flavored, it can have almond flavoring
inside or vanilla flavoring.
It's it, uh, but somewhere in the cake is a baby Jesus.
- Oh, right, okay. A - Little plastic baby cheese.
- Oh, yeah. Yeah. - And most of the, uh,
commercial king cakes that are, that are manufactured now
for Mardi Gras, keep the baby Jesus in a
little pl piece of plastic.
And they don't put it in the cake.
They put it right on the top,
so it becomes your responsibility.
'cause they don't want to put it inside the cake.
- So they don't get lawsuits from having
someone swallow the baby.
Jesus. Exactly. Okay.
- Although I think the swallowing the baby
Jesus is like communion. Right. Well,
- , wow.
Um, yeah, I did. I didn't know that .
Well, sort of, I
- Mean, I'm guessing not being a follower of the flock, I'm,
I'm looking at the whole situation from the
outside, but Right.
Yeah. Swallow the baby Jesus. I think that's probably the
- Thing thing.
Well, in truth, yes. It's the, the body of Christ is. Yeah.
Okay. Is, uh, I I is part of communion. Yeah.
- It's this big, it's like an inch pig. Yeah.
- A little plastic baby. Which makes it even easier
to swallow.
- Right? Yeah. So you don't want,
- I think it's the litigation part
that's probably driving what
- They're doing.
You don't, you don't want, you don't wanna do that,
- Right?
No. No. Yeah. I think I'd rather not. Yeah. So,
- Um, and why, - Why are we,
why are we talking about this? Well, because
- It's, because it's a Mardi Gras Oh.
Tradition. And this is the month of Mardi Gras.
And here's the thing about, wait,
- Here's the thing. Hold on. Hold. Here's
- The cultural thing.
Yes. Okay. Right. Well, wait, wait a minute.
We, before we've like, why are we here? Well,
- That's what I'm wondering because
- It's a cultural thing, because Oops.
Your culture show, your is showing,
- And it's showing quite a bit here.
- And, and I'm here with Tom Peterson
- And, and I'm here with Dean Foster, and
- We are both here with - Torin.
Hello. Hey. Hi, .
I didn't know if I was supposed to say in
my name or not. You're
- In and we're, and we're all,
and we're all wishing we're sitting
around eating king cake. Oh, yeah.
- Water now. Some king cake right now. Yeah.
- Yep. It's, it's very tasty. Yep.
But everybody in New Orleans has got their favorite king
cakes, so, and there's lots of bakeries that make them.
So you gotta be very careful about
what you say about King cake,
because you're probably gonna be either complimenting
or putting somebody's favorite king cake manufacturer down.
And everybody's got their favorites. So. Well, I
- Don't want, I don't have No, I'm gonna desire
to dis the king cake.
No wish to, no wish to that.
- Well, I say that as a caveat now
because one of the things that struck me recently is
that there's been this one manufacturer of king cake in,
in New Orleans that has gotten a tremendous amount of press.
Hmm. And the king cake, by the way, is phenomenal. Mm-Hmm.
. It really is good. It's dung.
- Okay. King - Cake. Mm.
- Okay. - Now Ang doesn't sound very French or
- Cre I would not say that would sound French.
- Right, right. Because they're not, they're Vietnamese.
Okay. Okay. It's a Vietnamese bakery that started about,
I think, uh, 10 or 15 years ago.
Okay. Uh, by Vietnamese immigrants Uhhuh .
And here's the cultural connection.
You've got, you've got the influence
of French culture in both New Orleans Yes. And in Vietnam.
- Right. Uhhuh and - Everybody's,
- Because it was a colony of, of France.
- Yes. And in Vietnam, one of the amazing things
that struck me, the very first time I I was there,
was the fact that you have this incredible
Southeast Asian food.
Hmm. You know, you've got all of the, the lemongrass and,
and the buns and, and, and,
and the delicious Southeast Asian foods
that you can imagine if you've ever had Thai food.
Mm-Hmm hmm. Yes. And the fur Mm-Hmm.
Which is uniquely Vietnamese Mm-Hmm.
, which is this, basically this hot soup.
Mm-Hmm. , you know, it's, right. Yeah.
You can have it with beef, you can have it with chicken,
you can have it with veggies, you can have it with shrimp.
Uh, I'm getting real hungry. It, it's, it's wonderful.
And, but it's all Southeast Asian style. Right. Okay. Yep.
Um, and then you have, um, you,
you see people coming home at the end of the day
with fresh baked baguettes saga,
the French influence in, in Yeah.
You know, in, in Ho Chi Minh City, it's part
of Vietnamese culture.
Sure, sure. So you have rice
and bread, not just rice culture.
Mm. Yeah. But you have rice and bread culture. Okay.
Uhhuh . And, uh, and,
and in Vietnam you can have French delicacies as well as,
uh, Southeast Asian style food.
Huh. And it, it's right there.
It's, it's always, since the French, certainly, um,
the colonization, it,
it's always been heavily influenced by French cuisine.
Mm. So now we have these French, these,
these Vietnamese immigrants coming to the Gulf Coast
of the United States and settling where, of course,
in a warm climate Right.
Where they can continue to do their seafood.
And because the Gulf is filled Sure. With shrimp. Mm-Hmm.
Absolutely. As it is the, the Gulf of Saigon
in, in, in Vietnam.
Mm-Hmm. . And
so it's a very similar topography,
and it allows them to continue to do the kind of, um, uh,
living that they, that they were doing.
Yeah, sure. And they bring with them all of their
culinary traditions, including the French tradition.
Yeah. Which matches
with the French traditions in New Orleans.
It's like a perfect fit. Okay. Yeah.
So now you have a Vietnamese bakery making king cake. Mm.
And what do they do? They make it in a uniquely French way.
Mm. Which makes it suddenly an amazing standout. Mm. Nice.
Now, I've had, I've had different kinds
of king cakes in New Orleans.
Okay. And they're all wonderful,
and they're all slightly different and, huh.
You know, you can have, uh, but they're all ishish.
And you can have a blind,
we should definitely have a blind tasting at king cakes.
'cause they're all fabulous whales.
I must , they're gonna force me into it.
I'll do my best. .
But this one when I just most recently had, um,
had, had, had done king cake was very different.
Okay. Oh, and it was different
because the tradition that the Vietnamese immigrants brought
with them was the tradition of lamination.
- Oh, yeah. Where
- You, where you take the dough and you, and you roll it out
and there's, and, and you fold it and fold it
and fold it and fold it.
And between each fold, there's lots of butter. Oh
- My goodness. There's
- Lots of cinnamon.
- Oh my goodness. - That they put in there. Mm-Hmm.
And then, and then you, and then you chill it,
and then you do it again.
You roll it out, you fold it, you fold it,
you fold it, you fold it.
Butter, butter, butter, butter. Chill it, do it again.
- You over there.
- And then, - And then,
unless I was eating some of that. Right.
- And then you frost - It. Just imagine you're,
- And what we're doing is we're, that's
- The problem. I'm,
- We're frosting it with the lightest frosting.
This is not a thick coat of heavy crusty
- Frosting too.
Right. Right's, much frosting. This is light. Yeah.
You don't, don't overdue. Well,
- In a, in a very French fashion,
- , - But it's a French fashion that comes
to us via Vietnam.
- Right, right. Yeah. Oh, that sounds wonderful.
- My gosh. And this particular king cake is bringing
traditional French culinary aspects
- Right.
- To the king cake. Yeah, sure.
- Yeah, - Sure. Which is, which
I have not seen in other king cakes.
Right. So you bite into this one. Yeah.
And the butter just oozes
- Oh my gosh. From it
- Wow.
Into this very light, light sweet frosting.
- Yeah. Wow. Yeah. - And I don't know if I were the baby
Jesus, I wouldn't wanna come out , right.
- . Oh, no, no, no, no. Stay there forever.
I, I think that's wise.
Um, it's, I mean it, if it's what it's telling me is
that if I lived in New Orleans,
I would weigh 400 pounds. .
- There is there is that,
- I'm not tall.
So 400 pounds. Yes.
Can, can I ask with that, is king cake baked year round?
No, no. Just during Mar. Oh.
You can only get it during that time. So that helps .
- You can only get it, I suppose you can go into some sort
of, you know, store where they're got frozen cake.
Yeah. Tea cake, you know, that's
- Not fresh - Baked.
Nobody wants it. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh, they only make it the, usually the two
or three weeks coming up to Mardi Gras.
Yeah. And then once Mardi Gras is finished,
once we got Fat Tuesday,
that's it. It goes away. We're done.
- You gotta wait. Gotta - Wait. Yeah.
- Wow. Wow. Well, that's, I mean, that's disappointing.
Can I ask why we're not in New Orleans right now,
- ?
Well, that's a question that we all often ask ourselves.
Yeah. Just about any time of year. Yeah.
Except maybe the middle of the summer. Well,
- That's, there are times where Yeah.
Yeah. No, but unbelievable. I mean, that's, that's such Oh
- My gosh. And, and,
- And I'm not gonna recover. So,
- And Don King cake has become so popular,
particularly this year.
It just kind of, the, everyone became aware of it.
It just hit the radar that, um, this year they ran out.
Uh, you couldn't order it. Yeah.
Um, and what they did is they always had some
every morning Mm-Hmm.
. And so people were lining up at dawn in front
of the, in front of the bakery.
- Right. Oh my gosh. Good for that.
Sleeping overnight probably. Yeah.
Or just not going to sleep
as it would be the case in New Orleans often.
Yeah, exactly. Um, you gotta cap
- Bond.
No. You know, this is what you can have on top of your, um,
your, your coffee and your coffee and benets
- And benets and beignets.
Yeah. Because beignets in that, what's, there's no problem.
- Benets, you'll have every day.
And so you'll continue to have your beignet. Sure.
But around Mardi Gras, you'll have your beignet
and coffee and king
- Cake.
Well, once they stop making it, I would,
I would hide my tears in beignets.
Mm-Hmm. . That's, you know,
that a So I think it's, I think,
- I think it was a Louis Prima hit back in the forties.
. Hide my tears in be,
- I'm really sure it was not Louis Prima.
I,
- My tears, - 99% of the people listening
to this have no idea who Louis
- Is.
Well, but he was, he was a big New Orleans.
He came from New Orleans. Okay.
He was a big New Orleans musician. There you go.
And he kind of, he kinda linked a lot of New Orleans style,
- But extremely into the Italian. Very
- Much so.
Lifestyle, Italian American Orleans, Italian,
- New Orleans, Italian.
Right. Uh, lifestyle.
And, and his music very much represented.
- And K and King cake is,
- But all of you people wanna go out
and get something from him right now. Yes.
- Comes outta the, the French and Creole tradition.
Mm mm-Hmm. . But now we have Vietnam bringing
classic French lamination
techniques to the king cake. Yeah. And making
- French lamination special sounds like something
that you talk about in some sort of romantic a aspect.
I'm, uh, I'm just, is it just saying, you know?
- Well, I, I, I think if you, if,
- I mean, you know, - If you're on,
- I'm on board for French lamination. I'm thinking
- Arts and crafts. But
- Are, are you?
Yeah. Well, so am I in a way ? Oh, no, no.
- It's a culinary term. - Ah, ah.
- But the French have kind of, like, made
that their technique.
And now there are other cultures
that do lamination too, but, well,
- Vietnam.
- Yeah, because it was because of the French. Right,
- Exactly.
Yeah. And there's, you know, the influence.
Well, that's like New Orleans.
The French were there. It was colon.
- I just never had king cake with so much butter oozing out.
- Yeah. You made the point.
I'm sitting over here ready to eat my arm.
right now. ,
- Because I know you, I know you've got a, um, a Substack,
which hopefully many of our,
our listeners are also avid readers of.
Um, is this something that you,
I don't know when we're releasing this,
but that either you are going to write about
or maybe have written about by the time this comes out?
I'm not sure. I'm just curious. 'cause this,
it's had, this is something very pertinent. Yeah.
- The article is definitely coming out on,
on my Substack Oh, great.
Which is Dean Foster Global do substack.com. Cool. Okay.
And, uh, it's, what was
- That, - Dean Foster Global Do substack.com. Okay.
- Thanks. Got the link notes.
- And, and it's coming out in my column on Culture's
Consequences, where we talk about headlines
or things that are going on in the news.
A as this month is, wasn't
- That Game Marty Show with Bob Barker?
Welcome to Culture's
- Consequences. If only it were,
- It's a maybe Arizona now too.
Yeah. Not with Bob Barker. Culture. Consequences.
Maybe it should be not with Bob. Yeah.
Maybe it should be with a different
host. With a different host.
- Well, we're talking about to carry, maybe we,
we talk about not he,
the cultural reasons for the headlines.
Not the political, not the economic, not social policy,
but what's going, why is there a
- Cultural podcast?
Exactly. So, you know, we have to have,
- So we're mentioning it here, here,
- Too.
Absolutely. There we go. Right. Okay. Cool.
Well, that makes sense. Nice. Yeah. Nice.
- Yeah. So
let's, the Good Times roll.
- Yes. Well, absolutely.
Let's, it would be nice if they would
roll for a while, you know,
- Just really, 'cause we need some,
we could use a few this year. We really need some,
- A couple of them.
Yeah. Yeah.
Besides the, um, the King cake
or maybe an, an adjacent king adjacent to King cake, uh,
what other cultural aspects around Mardi Gras, um, that are,
are, are kind of obvious flagrant
or not so flagrant, maybe that's more important.
Maybe ones that are underlying issues
or aspects
or anything like that. You got anything for us? Well,
- You, you know, you know the crews, right?
So there's, uh, different crews, different groups of people
that represent different clubs,
- Crews, not a cruise
that you would take like down the Mississippi.
Right. Oh, A-C-R-E-W-S?
- No, K-R-E-W-E. - Oh mm, very
- Good.
KREW Okay. Cruise. Yeah.
And they represent the, the, the tradition goes back, um,
uh, I'm not quite sure how long, but, but quite a long time.
It's gotta be at least a hundred years, maybe more, um,
where different social clubs Yeah.
In New Orleans would gather and celebrate Mardi Gras.
Mm-Hmm. in a very special way. Okay.
They usually, you know, there's, there, there were crews
that represented social clubs that were quite, um,
elite in, in the city.
Okay. Yeah. And if you go back a hundred years, you're,
you're talking about, um, civil war time
and post-Civil war and pre-Civil war.
And, and so these were very segregated, um, activities Sure.
And different social clubs Sure.
Were only, all social clubs at the time were only white.
There was one or two that were black,
but they were, as far as I know,
they were not included in the
- Parade, in the main parades. Right. Yeah.
- So, so different crews would parade at different times.
Yeah. And, um,
you have different crews parading at different times up
to Mardi Gras Yeah.
That Tuesday. Okay.
So for the two, the 10 days, let's say
before Mardi Gras, you've got different parades every day
by these different crews.
And of course, um, one of the, one
of the main black crews now is
the Zulus Uhhuh .
And everybody comes out for the, for, for these Zulu
- Crew, the, the, and, and these crews for people
who don't know,
and again, I'm not gonna pretend I,
I know things about this, but I'm,
I think this is when you're seeing the very decorated, uh,
costuming and, and, and floats perhaps.
- Yeah. Yeah. Floats and extraordinary costumes and stuff.
- And lot, a lot of time and effort being
- Put this stuff and lots of music.
- Right. Lots of music. Right, right.
So you see these di very different areas.
And you're talking the zulus.
Are they, I'm thinking they're going
to be incredibly colorful.
- Yeah. A amazing, yeah. Nice. Truly amazing.
And everybody wants to get some sort
of souvenir from these floats as they go by.
Right, right. So each float is,
is is throw literally throwing these different things
to the crowds on both sides.
Sure. And you wanna catch the Zulu coconuts,
and you wanna catch, um, whatever crew is going by,
whatever specialty they've got, you know, coconut coconuts.
Wow. Yeah. But they're really quite
dramatically designed. Really?
- Are they tossing these things? Yes,
- They are.
- The, the, the coconuts. Yes. Wow. Wow. Yeah.
- You gotta really have a heads up.
- A heads up. And you better have a good
pair of hands, .
Exactly. I'm not sure what that, because I know
- About throwing beads, but, uh, yeah.
Yeah. Those won't give you a concussion.
- Yeah. - Yeah. The beads.
Of course, everybody throws the beads. Yeah.
- Yeah. - So you got different crews and different,
and they're all marching on different days,
and there's lots of music and it's big celebration.
- Okay. Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm. .
So in, in these,
in all these crew crews they're representing now are,
aren't they representing things like, um,
more indigenous peoples of the area?
- Well, some of them are serious like that.
- Some like would've been African American, that kind
of thing, along with many
of the different in indigenous areas.
And some are just, you're talking
social, so you're talking like
- Social clubs just for fun Mm-Hmm.
- Groups that get together for whatever reason.
- And, and every year you get new crews that,
that are joining these different parades, um, that,
that are just, just for the fun of it.
Mm. Right. Right. I mean, like most recently, this week,
I think we had the crew of Barcus, which is dogs.
- Oh, okay. Right. Oh, okay.
That makes sense. I get it. Yeah.
- Yeah. and, uh, so the dogs,
but there's also the people who own the dogs
who are on the floats.
And, uh, it's a great deal of fun.
- I, I hope they're not throwing dogs into the
- .
No, I don't think they throw the
- Off bones.
Maybe. I don't mean bones of dogs.
Oh, let's not go there. Come on.
- Why throwing a dog a - Bone? I,
- No, this is a celebration, - Chew bone or something
- Like that.
The dogs are walking along with the floats. Oh, I
- See.
That's good to hear. That makes
- They're own, makes me feel better about it, and Sure.
Everybody's having a good time.
- Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Good. Nice. Okay. Nice. That's
- Nice. Are the dogs dressed up?
- Yeah, of course. They're dressed up. Okay, good.
Yeah, they're in costume
- And - Everybody's in costume.
You gotta be for Mardi Gras. Yeah, right.
- Do the, and and do they the costume type of stuff.
I mean, I've seen so many pictures
and videos of, of the people really dressed, lots
of feathers and beads and,
and sparkles of all different kinds and stuff like that.
And, and then, but like with the barcus,
I think you said is, would they be dressed up like,
like dogs or are they going out and dressing?
I know you don't have to be an expert on Barca.
- Well, there's a, there's a king of Barca, so one
of the dogs is gonna win, you know, and, and,
and the owners are also dressed
- Up in, in costumes.
Yeah. And are they dressing up like
dogs or don't you know? No,
- No.
I, no, the, the owners, no.
- And not, the dogs aren't dressing up like dogs.
I think they have a pretty good
costume on their own . Right.
- But, oh, the bean parade is happening too. Oh, okay.
There's, here we go. Yeah. The Bean parade is, is a big one.
- Okay. Yes. - We wear,
- These are people who
- Wearing costumes that they beaded themselves with beans.
- With beans, yes. Actually grown beans of some kind,
like actual bean beans,
- Not like, like rice
and beans, which is a traditional dish in New Orleans.
Sure. So the beans, but before you cook them.
- Okay. Yeah. So, but yeah. Okay.
- And, and jackets and, and - All made from the beans. All
- Made from the - Beans.
Wow. Okay. And are they throwing beans?
- That's a good question. I should ask my daughter.
'cause she lives in New Orleans. Yeah. And
- She's, and takes part in these things.
- That's true. Oh, definitely into the beans. Yeah.
- Oh, she's into the beans. Yeah. Yes. Oh, okay.
- She's been beaning for weeks.
- It may be me, but I would say, you don't wanna walk behind
that group, you know,
- I, I see. Yeah. You know.
- Yeah. It's just, just a thought.
- Well, they're uncooked.
- Well, okay. True.
And I have a hard time believing that the, the people
who do this don't consume beans
- Well - In large quantities.
in large quantities, massive
quantities, perhaps. Of course,
- Because they - Would've to, I mean, you gotta get a lot
of beans to do this.
Right. You need your energy. And at some point,
- Um, I have to read off, I looked at the parks website.
- Okay. And, - Okay, uh,
there's wonderful pictures of dogs.
People should definitely check this out. Crew of barus.org.
. I'm giving Barus a plug.
- Uh, crew being K-R-E-W-E.
- Yes. That's how we spelled it earlier of barus.org.
And, um, we've got some, some Parkes royalty here.
We've got the Barus King is King Bentley Jins.
We've got the Bures Queen, queen be Brusard.
And the celebrity Grand Marshall is of course,
Pippa, the three-legged dog. Oh,
- Course.
- The p the three-legged dog course. We gotta give course.
They're all very cute. You gotta give it to Pippa.
I mean, she comes out, Pippa
- I think is maybe my, my, I mean, I hate
to choose favorites here. Now
- Pippa's an automatic winner.
She's got three legs. She wins.
- Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. They're
- Very, very cute dog. Yeah. Check it.
- Okay. Alright. Nice. Very nice.
We've got beans, we've got, uh, Zulus, we've got, uh,
many of these kinds of things.
Anything else? In and around the, um, the,
the event down there of, of that you also mentioned Brazil,
we've talked about this in the past
- Carnival in Brazil.
- Yeah. Which is, - We call it Mardi Gras Inval in New
Orleans because of the French influence. Right,
- Right.
Which means that Tuesday. Right.
- So, - Which is the Tuesday before,
- Right before Lent lent.
Yes. Which is Wednesday. Right. So
- Ash Wednesday - Actually Ash Wednesday.
Right, right. And that's when all celebration stops, right?
Oh, yes. It's very, and now we have to give something up.
- That's right. You s you must, you must sacrifice. Yes.
- So this is all about celebrating
as much as you possibly can
- Before that.
Right. Fitting it in. Yep. Yeah.
- So in, in Brazil, okay. It's not French, it's Portuguese.
Mm-Hmm. . Uh, so this is really a
carnival tradition, right?
I mean, Mardi Gras is a form of carnival. Mm-Hmm.
, same thing. Mm-Hmm.
- . Right. And Carnival
is is all over the globe.
Right.
- Wherever there was the, the, um, Catholic Right.
Mediterranean influence. Right. Yeah. Because usually
- Brought it's in some of the Caribbean Yes.
- But usually brought through the,
the period of colonization.
Sure. So it's, it's not something to celebrate,
but it celebration
- Comes.
Well, but you celebrate taking it from that as and,
and owning it for your own. Right. So
- Wherever the French colonized,
wherever the Portuguese colonized. Right. Or, um,
- But not the British.
- Not the British. We don't have carnival in British. No.
So what we have in, in instead. Well,
- It's not a big Catholic country anymore.
Exactly. It's been a like fif to the,
since the 15 hundreds Right
- Around there.
You know, this is all just an excuse
for midwinter celebration
because we'll all go mad if we don't have something.
Yeah. So what do we have? Yeah.
We puritans who don't come out of these cultures
that don't come out have of the, the,
this Catholic tradition.
- Oh, I'll tell what we have.
Have, do you know what we have? We
- Have Halloween.
- We have Halloween, right In that time period.
I know what we have in this time period. Also, Groundhog Day
- , that's a celebration.
. I'd like to see Punka
to Phil dressed up in beans,
- Throwing into the Barca thing.
Um, come on, the crew. Come on. Yeah. Pun be a Barca Royal.
And everybody's got some rodent who's supposedly
telling us about the weather.
- , you know, that says so much about them
- As the meteorologist.
It doesn't say much about them, does it?
- About how to have a good time.
- Yeah. Well that's kind of where I'm going with that.
- In a puritan based culture versus a absolutely
non Puritan based culture. Yeah.
- Enjoy this. This is going to enlighten you
because see, it's also gonna tell you if there's six more
weeks of winter or not.
So when it tells you that,
boy do you feel good about, there's six more
- Weeks of winter.
90% of the time it always says Yeah.
That you got six more weeks. Winter. Guess
- What?
Winter you got six, six more weeks of winter
because you do super.
Yeah. 'cause no matter what the stupid thing says,
you're gonna have six more weeks of went. You'll
- Actually have that turns out.
So go in. So go back and have another slice of king cake
- .
Sounds good to me. I mean,
you sold me absolutely pretty quickly earlier.
Yep, yep. Yeah. Yep. I,
I'm all in on the taste test. Absolutely.
- So is that starting right now? Right now. Ready to
- Go?
Okay. I thought, I thought we were going to do that.
I thought we were gonna have a taste test of, of King cake
during I wasn't made aware of this during this discussion.
Okay. A blind, I'm a little annoyed Right. That we're not,
- I'm, I'm a little - Aggrieved.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I'm, and I,
and I, you know, I'm not sure who's responsible for that.
I, I, I'm know, can we blame you? Torin is the
- Producer.
I, I'm, I think we have to blame Dean. I I don't, I don't
- Wanna That's throw that out there.
- But, but I'm gonna throw it out
- Because I we didn't anything get it off of me here.
- You know, I I, I could have placed an order with Don,
like back in November and maybe they would've put
- On list, gotten it to us by now. A little, a
- Little proactive here. Maybe I would've been
- Yeah, I know.
I think, I think perhaps that, uh,
the ball has been dropped very much so, so to speak.
Yeah. Um, and,
and maybe the king cake has been dropped
. That's, let's
- Hope. I don't wanna even think about that.
- .
- Dean, can I ask,
'cause we, you mentioned your culture, conse culture's
consequences column on your substack.
Um, what else have you talked about in terms of sort
of getting behind the daily headlines?
- Well, um, we, we, we talked about, um, in one article,
I think the one that came out just before, um, Ukraine
and Russia and the cultural issues, uh,
behind that conflict.
Okay. Uh, specifically, um, not economic, not political,
but the cultural issues, the differences
between Ukraine culture and Russian culture.
Gotcha. And they're, one of the features, uh,
while they share many similarities, uh,
because of the ethnic roots are off, are, are the same, uh,
generally speaking, um, LAN linguistic roots are the same,
although Ukrainian is a different ru language from Russian.
Mm. Um, and, um, and,
and they're both Eastern Orthodox in terms of religion,
uh, the significant
- And, and the, and the Soviet Union had controlled it for,
for 90 some
- Years and, and before that in history several times
as well for other reasons.
Sure. Um, so there's lots of similarity,
but fundamentally I would even go so far as
to say there are probably, um,
as many re reasons why they are different.
Mm-Hmm. And one of those significant reasons is a,
is the Russian culture.
Hmm. Russian culture is, is, um, what I would define as one
of the world's insecure cultures.
Hmm. Where it has to get its definition
from those other cultures around it Hmm.
As opposed to supplying it itself. Hmm hmm.
And this is not the case with Ukraine. Hmm.
Which has a very def well-defined culture. Interesting.
Okay. So, uh, we wrote about that. Hmm.
And that's on the Substack.
And before that we did a, uh, an article about, um,
about, uh, Mr.
Musk and Tesla in Sweden, where most of the cars are,
are produced in Europe.
And the problem, most
- Of the Tesla cars - Are produced in
Sweden, a lot of them are Okay.
And, uh, there's a big strike in the Swedish factory
because he went in with, uh,
nons Swedish ideas about how to manufacture
and how to compensate people for their jobs.
Mm-Hmm. Sure. And the Swedes
wouldn't have any of it.
- Yeah. Hard to believe the Swedes wouldn't have
any of that .
Um, and, and not hard to believe at all that, that, that Mr.
Musk, Elon Musk brought in his own ideas, um, of them,
which I'm guessing are basically his American ideas
that he's bringing out of here to, to bring over there.
I'm guessing, am I
- Wrong?
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.
- Okay. Hmm. Well, we do know how to do everything right.
The American, the Amer. Oh, of course.
We do know how to do everything right. Yes.
I'm not talking about us individually,
I'm talking about the U us A USA.
Yeah. Which would lead us to something like what is known
as the Ugly American,
which maybe we'll talk about it in another, in another, uh,
could be interesting maybe. Well,
- You know, from point, from a cultural point of view,
everybody can be ugly if you don't
understand the culture. Mm.
- I take exception to that. What do you Oh, dare you.
I know that the, look, I didn't get cleaned up
and really spruced up today, but gimme a break here.
I'm may covered in king cake,
but normally I was buried.
I wanna play the baby Jesus . Do you? I do. Okay.
I would do in a massive king cake.
I would, I would appreciate too. Only a layered one though.
That's, that's what I want. Laminated. Laminated. I'm sorry.
Laminated. Laminated. Yeah. No, no, that's okay. Yes.
You gotta be picky. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Absolutely. It's
- Remarkable how the cultural influences went
around the world for this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. You have the French cultural
influence in New Orleans, right.
That, that was there since the French Days of
- Conversation.
Women, the French had controlled
- It.
Mm-Hmm. . And then the Vietnam Vietnamese
immigrants bringing French influences from
Vietnam. Right. Uh,
- That's - Cool.
Yeah. And back, back to Yes. New
- Orleans.
- Yes. Which kind of explains why this phenomenon happened
with this particular bakery,
because there was this need for,
or at least this appreciation for in a town that's dedicated
to food and music in good times.
Mm-Hmm. , um, the, this, this need
for something
that would make this make the king cake stand out
more than any of the others.
Mm-Hmm. . Or at least give it,
give it a recognition that, um,
that would require something more than
what was being produced.
And what was, what would that be?
It would be French culinary techniques. Yeah, yeah,
- Yeah. But
- From Vietnam, right?
- Yeah. Right. Yeah. Sure. That or melding. Yeah.
- And that became, that became a phenomenon
- And it sounds good to me.
Yeah. I a field trip. Yeah, absolutely. N right now.
Alright, well then let's maybe
wrap it up and head over there.
We can get there by dinner. Okay. To new to
- New Orleans or Saigon?
- Uh, well guess I think if we're getting there by dinner,
we gotta go the New Orleans route first, right?
Sure. Stop there first and stop over. Okay.
Have five king cakes each, each of,
of the laminated Absolutely.
Uhhuh and then yeah. Off to Vietnam,
- Then hop on a plane and get, get to, uh, yeah.
To Vietnam. Yeah. Getta Chi Min City
and absolutely my, one of my favorite restaurants, Cho.
- Oh, okay. Okay. Let's go.
Well, we'll talk about that on another day, ,
because, uh, thank you Dean for, uh, for this today with
that, I'm, I'm just sitting here drooling all over
myself, which is Yeah.
This's d Drew all over course. Pretty disgust.
Really, really, really gross. Yeah. Yep. Thank you. Torn.
My pleasure. And, and, and I'm Tom Peterson
and we've been here, uh, talking at you about all
of these wonderful foods
because easy for you to say.
And, ooh, oops. Your
- Culture, culture is showing - Smell ya
before you roll off and disappear back into
your own cultures.
Let me give you some information about something we really
want you to know, and that's how to get hold of us.
Give us your questions, your comments,
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Culture show. Thanks.