Jeff Baron loves pizza. Not in the way that most people "love pizza," smitten with the strings of melted cheese and memories of late college nights that accompany each slice. No. Jeff Baron is downright passionate about pie, even subscribing to Pizza Today, a trade magazine for the true slice aficionado.

Lucky for all of the lesser pizza-lovers out there, Baron's intense love has manifested itself at Crescent Pie & Sausage Co., the new Mid-City labor of love he owns with business partner and chef, Bart Bell.

But we'll get to all that. First of all, Baron's love affair starts to make a little more sense when he discusses his career path so far.

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Well, there is the premier option if you're from out of town, which is, of course, Bourbon Street and French Quarter revelry. The crowds will be plentiful, the beads will be abundant, and you're likely to get an eyeful of things you didn't think were allowed in public. With little ones, the parades in Metairie and Uptown are much more family friendly, with stuffed animals, toys and hundreds of truck parades tossing out countless goodies.

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Ad man Tom Martin is the president of  Zehnder Communications, a local, award-winning agency known for its innovation and creative thinking. This Mardi Gras, he is proving his company's characteristics to be true. Martin has rounded up a group of web-savvy folks from around the country and will attempt to use social media to change the outside world's (read: anywhere not here) concept of our Carnival celebrations.

His mission: To use mommy bloggers, food writers and Tweeted photos of families enjoying Mardi Gras to make people realize that Fat Tuesday does not have to be a half-naked, debauchery-filled drunk-fest. Especially not if you have children. His main method: the website MyMardiGrasExperience.Com and, of course, Twitter.

What started as just an innocent idea now has backing from major companies both local and national, like Tabasco and Sheraton, and his pet project has been written about in prestigious advertising magazine, AdAge. It's all come pretty far from last year's Mardi Gras, when Martin started this revolution all by himself and in the humblest of places.

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It's a beloved Carnival-time tradition that has been carried out for generations: Find out when Arthur Hardy's Mardi Gras Guide is available, and as soon as it is, go get you one from the nearest drugstore.

Of course, time passes and things change, sometimes for the worse and sometimes for the better. As of a decade or two ago, you could no longer pick up your Mardi Gras Guide at a K&B, a definite negative. As of this year, though, in an exciting change for the better, you don't have to physically go pick up your Mardi Gras Guide at all... there's a new app in town!

Local digital designer Orin Dodge of Calliope Digital got together with Mr. Mardi Gras himself and created an application for the iPhone that has all of the perks of the beloved annual glossy with much less heft to carry around in that Mardi Gras backpack you wear all week long. What's in that thing, anyway?

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According to the krewe website, the Muses parade, originally scheduled for tonight, has been re-scheduled for tomorrow night due to inclement weather. The Southshore forecast for this evening calls for temperatures in the upper 30s and an almost 100% chance of  rain.

The Muses pre-party has also been moved to tomorrow, but the aMUSEment will be tonight as scheduled.

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Culinary tourism has been increasing in popularity all over the country for the past few years. You can take foodie tours of specific New York City neighborhoods; Napa offers tours of vineyards and their accompanying restaurants; Cooking Light magazine has a monthly feature on where to travel and what to eat while you're there. Planning a vacation itinerary with a gustatory focus has been exploding everywhere... except for here. Somehow, in New Orleans, where a love of good food runs as deep as crazy street names and corrupt politicians, the trend had seemingly passed us over. 

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Some people might get twelve lords leaping on the Twelfth Day of Christmas, but we lucky folks here in New Orleans get the official beginning of Mardi Gras season instead. Not to rub it in or anything... but we win!

That's right, today is January 6th, and that means a multitude of things. First, King Cake season has officially arrived. Whether you prefer a cream cheese-filled Randazzo's confection, a traditional French Galette des Rois from La Boulangerie or even if you're still whining about the absence of those colored sugar-covered McKenzie's cakes, the beginning of plastic babies being passed around the office is a definite cause for excitement.

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Well, last time we talked about breakfast, it was November, and my running buddies and I had capped off an 8-miler with an amazing brunch at The Ruby Slipper. It was so delicious that I've been back since then (just this weekend, in fact!), but, sadly, not after a run. What with the bustle of the holiday season and the intense studying I had to do for finals, my running shoes sat practically untouched in the corner of my room until Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's were all over.

Now it's 2010, though, and I have a marathon to finish training for! The Mardi Gras Rock & Roll Marathon date is looming large on February 28 in my new dayplanner, and I'm ready to get back in the game. To prove it, I woke up at 5:30 a.m. on January 2 to meet my Team In Training friends at Audubon Park for a group training session.

The schedule called for 17 miles, but since I'd taken so much time off, I settled on 14 miles, which was still the longest I've ever run! The route took us from the crook of the river near the zoo all the way to Esplanade Avenue and back. Along the way, we saw the sunrise, smelled the soap of the streetcleaners in the Quarter, and spotted a few Florida revelers still celebrating their Sugar Bowl victory from the night before.

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Now that we've got a few half-marathons under our belts, my running buddies and I have turned our attention towards February's Mardi Gras Rock & Roll Marathon. We started training a few weeks ago, which means we run at least three days a week, mixed in with some cardio and strength workouts. Due to the time constraints of the workweek, we save our long runs for Saturdays and Sundays, which means one thing: post-run brunch!

Long runs, often around 10 miles or more, leave us absolutely ravenous, so four of us have taken to trying a different restaurant every weekend, and - this is the best part! - we order whatever we want. After all, French bread stuffed with scrambled eggs, sausage gravy, American cheese and bacon is easily rationalized when you've just burned off 800 calories.

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I'm a local New Orleanian, born and raised. I lived here for 17 years before I left for college, came back two out of four summers during college, and have spent over a year here now since moving back home. And yet, somehow I had never been to that legendary restaurant/spiritual dining experience on Orleans Avenue. Yes, that's right, I'm talking about Dooky Chase.

Lucky for me, I attended high school with one of Chef Leah Chase's granddaughters. We Mount Carmel girls were actually so fortunate as to have Chef Leah prepare food for us when we went on overnight retreats! Still, my memories of eating chicken cacciatore in my pjs in a cafeteria with 150 other girls pale in comparison to my dinner last night at - long last! - Dooky Chase.

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Goat cheese-stuffed squash blossoms. That's the only reason you really need to visit Domenica, John Besh's new restaurant in The Roosevelt, but if you're looking for more, I've got some. They are a study in alliteration: braised berlotti beans, burrata and budino.

I should start at the beginning. My dad's, my brother's and my birthday are all in the same week of September. Growing up, this meant we all shared a cake - doberge, of course - and a family party. With my brother now in Colorado, grown-up birthday week means a fancy father-daughter dinner. It's a tradition I revere even more than that coveted middle slice of doberge that's exactly half-chocolate, half-lemon.

I do love to eat, so as my birthday approaches, I find myself planning out my various birthday meals much more than conjuring up a wishlist of gifts. This year I voted to eat at Domenica; I had been looking forward to handmade pastas and authentic Italian-style pizzas since I had first read about it. We made reservations for a Tuesday at 5:45 p.m.

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