In New Orleans, when you throw a party in the winter, you make a gumbo. It's not something most people there think about. And if it's Carnival, you have a king cake — or two, or three.

So with the Super Bowl on Sunday and guests coming over, I'll have a gumbo simmering on my stove. Since I moved here from New Orleans two years ago, I've made a lot of gumbo, but I always come back to everyone's favorite: chicken and sausage.

Chris Hunt/Staff (ENLARGE)

A slimmed-down gumbo that's stocked with chicken and sausage can take center stage at a Super Bowl or Mardi Gras party. Best of all, it's better made a day or two ahead of time.

RELATED STORIES: • King cake bakers busy this time of year • Recipes

When I was first taught how to make this gumbo by a native New Orleanian many Fat Tuesdays ago, she showed me how to cut up and debone the fresh chicken and fry it in butter in a cast-iron skillet. Then fry the vegetables. In more butter.

Though it's true that most Cajun recipes start with "Get four sticks of butter, (or five, or six). Melt," I've refined the recipe over the years. I've cut all the butter and use the bare minimum of olive oil. I can't bring myself to use low-fat sausage. It's still a rich dish.

I was also taught that after you spend a day getting the gumbo perfect, you leave it on the stove overnight. When you reheat it the next day, it's better. The rule is you leave the gumbo on the stove and as long as you bring it to a boil once every 24 hours, it's good. It gets better each day, and then it's gone. I told this to my cousin visiting from Manhattan one Mardi Gras while he was slurping down a second-day serving, and he asked, "Well, why don't you just make it, and then boil it once the next day and then serve it?" But you can't resist that first day when it's sitting there, filling the air with its come-hither aroma.

Ask people for their gumbo recipe, though, and many are stuck. "How do I make my gumbo? Hmmmm," said Martha Robert of Marietta, who grew up in Hammond, La., about 60 miles from New Orleans, and moved here 15 years ago.

Her specialty is turkey gumbo, from the leftover Thanksgiving turkey carcass. "I know I got some advice from my mom, I used some tips from her. I talked to my sister-in-law. I guess I use a mix of recipes," she said, "and it just works." One famous Thanksgiving, Robert ordered a fried turkey from Copeland's and used that carcass for gumbo.

"It was wonderful ... just wonderful," she said.

Then there's king cake. Bakeries in New Orleans start making them nearly around the clock in early January to unveil their cakes with great fanfare on the start of Carnival, Jan. 6. These colorful treats are as pretty to look at as they are good to eat, with their purple, green and gold toppings. The cakes are a little harder to find in Atlanta, so I was determined to bake my own.

Deep down, we king cake devotees do know ... it's really just a coffee cake. But how can anything decorated with purple, green and gold icing be a "just" anything?

So I asked some other displaced New Orleanians and got the easiest king cake recipe possible. Reshape unbaked Pillsbury cinnamon rolls into a big ring, then divide the icing it comes with into three parts and dye it purple, green and gold. To make it even easier, bake three cakes at a time (no dividing the icing, and each little icing package the rolls come with is perfect for coloring and discarding).

What else to serve? Nothing complements gumbo on the stove like oysters on the grill. Guests can also snack on muffulettas. The tasty sandwiches are easy to make before the game. Wealthy with olive dressing, they are filled with ham, salami and cheese.

During halftime, you can grill the oysters on the shells. Harry's Farmers Market sells them by the pound and by the bushel. A bushel is about four dozen oysters. Plenty for a crowd. Grilled on the half shell, topped with olive oil, garlic and grated Parmesan cheese, it takes about 5 minutes to cook a few dozen, if they're already shucked and on ice. You're done before the third quarter starts. And as fast as you grill them, your guests will eat them. With any luck, you'll have a few more to grill when the game's over — and someone else is washing out the gumbo pot.