Gumbo. Jeffrey W. / Flickr / 2014 / CC BY 2.0
The 12th of October is Gumbo Day.
Gumbo Day occurs around the start of the autumn in North America. In southern Louisiana, home of gumbo, it’s considered a good food to keep you warm in cold weather.
Gumbo takes a few hours to make. The hardest part is the roux — it’s not a simple French roux. You have to cook the roux for a long time, stirring very frequently, to get the right colour for gumbo.
If you don’t have the time today, maybe you can find a restaurant somewhere in your vicinity that serves it, or cheat and get a packaged gumbo mix. The mix may perhaps not be a bad idea if this is your first time out, to give you the hang of the general idea.
Gumbo is also traditional on Christmas Eve in Louisiana — having Gumbo Day in October gives first timers the chance to do a dry-run well in advance.
#GumboDay
See also: Gumbo, Cajun Cuisine
History
The earliest print mention that CooksInfo is aware of for a “Gumbo Day” in October dates from 2001 in Illinois:
“National Gumbo Day, Oct. 12” — King, Joe. October observances bizarre. Woodstock, Illinois: Northwest Herald. Sunday, 7 October 2001. Page B1, col. 1.
The source was attributed to http://www.brownielocks.com/october.html (Still extant as of 2021.)