Parading: The Irish-Italian Parade and What to Do With Your Catch

The Sunday after St. Patrick’s day was a beautiful day, so we headed to Metairie to catch the Irish-Italian Parade. The parade, which started in 1983, is known for it’s marching groups that hand out flowers and it’s unique throws. Sure there are beads, doubloons, and moon pies; however, the real prizes are potatoes, cabbage, carrots, and if you are lucky, garlic.

Our loot this year was quite impressive. But what to do with it?

Cristina posted a picture of our loot on Facebook. Our friend Vinnie offered to give our cabbage a good home. Since I like cabbage, but cabbage doesn’t really like me, I thought this was a good idea.

Yet, we were left with still a lot of carrots and potatoes. We were planning on barbequing some steaks that evening, so why not put the vegetables on the grill as well? I sliced up our carrots, onions, and bell peppers we caught at the parade as well as some summer squash I purchased at the farmer’s marketthe day before. Drizzled some olive oil and some Herbes de Provence on them and placed them in my BBQ skillet. I took some russet potatoes, scrubbed them clean, and put them on the grill as well to get that smoky flavor before I transfer them to the oven to have them bake all the way through. Not a bad way to use free vegetables.

Meanwhile, Vinnie worked her magic on the cabbage and delivered to us some braised cabbage and onions and topped it with some pickle relish.

So we started the day with a community parade and ended with a community meal. Cool, cool, cool.