Gumbo Day. Jeffrey W. / Flickr / 2014 / CC BY 2.0
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.