Of all the gifts thrown at the New Orleans parades, one of the newest and most unusual is a collection of South Asian family recipes.
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They throw lots of things at the Carnival parades in New Orleans: plastic beads and stuffed animals, glittered shoes and doubloons, light-up swords and toilet plungers. But cookbooks?
The Krewe da Bhan Gras, a group that has been performing bhangra, Bollywood and other South Asian dances in parades for the last three years, has handed out a thousand of them this season. The slim cookbooks feature 18 family recipes — a veritable who’s who of South Asian dishes, from chana masala to begun bhaja to Sri Lankan love cake.
Food items have long been a favorite giveaway at the Carnival celebrations in New Orleans. Most famously, the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club hands out elaborately decorated coconuts, as has been its tradition since 1910. You might catch a MoonPie or beignet mix at a parade as you watch a dance troupe with a double entendre food name shimmy by.
But cookbooks are something new, according to Arthur Hardy, the founder of the Mardi Gras Guide, now in its 49th annual edition.
Throws, as the parade trinkets are known, date back to the late 1800s, when candy, peanuts and sweets were tossed from floats, Mr. Hardy said. The Rex Organization, which will parade on Tuesday, introduced glass-bead necklaces in the 1920s, and in 1960, aluminum doubloons, which Mr. Hardy still considers a perfect throw because it includes the date, parade theme and organization in one small souvenir.
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