This is Mardi Gras week, with today being Fat Tuesday.  In honor of that every year at this time packzi make their appearance all over Cleveland bakeries.  So of course yesterday I ran out to get some to avoid the inevitable lines for today.

Now packzi, if you have not had one, are these amazing little (well the ones I got were not so little) doughnuty pastries filled with every type of scrumptious kind of filling from fruits, to my new favorite cream cheese.  The polish people knew what they were doing when they created these amazing little confections.

This morning while I was getting ready to drive my daughter to school she informed me the apple filled packzi was to be her breakfast and that what ever she did not finish eating on the way she was going to have zero shame walking into school with it.  (that's my girl!)

So as we are driving to school I informed her that before I had moved here I had never eaten a packzi before.  The look I received in response to this was somewhere between shock, and typical teenage I think my mom doesn't know what she is talking about.  But, it's true.  No packzi for me before moving to The Land of the CLE.  This was apparently she just could not fathom, that the entire country, heck the entire world may not know what a packzi is.  I continued to tell her that it was very recently that I discovered that packzi is not actually pronounced the way it is spelled, as in pack-zee, it is actually pooch-key.  She just laughed and laughed and laughed.

Gotta love those teenagers.

So in light of the fact it is Fat Tuesday, the Season of Mardi Gras, and Lent, and coupled with the fact my oldest lives in the land of Louisiana, it got me thinking about our trip down and our time New Orleans, which if you have never been is a definite must see.  Except maybe not in July, when we went, and it's 98 degrees at midnight, and that actually feels a wee bit cooler than it did during the day.

So grab your packzi, drink a hurricane, pretend your at a Mardi Gras parade and check out a few of my favorite pics from the Land of the Big Easy.

2017-07-27 09.57.57 2017-07-27 10.13.01 2017-07-27 10.08.00 2017-07-27 10.25.08 2017-07-27 10.25.39 2017-07-27 10.27.29 2017-07-27 10.29.42 2017-07-27 10.31.44 2017-07-27 10.50.14 2017-07-27 11.18.32 2017-07-27 20.09.08 2017-07-27 21.08.22 2017-07-27 22.17.42Screenshot 2017-07-28 13.05.33 2017-07-28 17.26.37 2017-07-28 17.26.46 2017-07-28 17.26.51 2017-07-28 17.56.19

Beignet's while also scrumptious just not quite a packzi.......

2017-07-28 17.56.29 2017-07-28 19.08.04 2017-07-28 19.15.07 2017-07-28 19.20.11 2017-07-29 22.10.47 2017-07-29 22.31.02 2017-07-29 22.36.56 2017-07-29 23.19.29 2017-07-29 23.35.48 2017-07-30 16.53.16

Well, just because this little one makes any blog post just a wee bit better, plus she's really good at suckering her big Uncle into carrying her.  Notice the victory smile she has after getting her way. 2017-07-30 17.04.20 2017-07-28 17.33.23

Happy Fat Tuesday!!