Today on Food on Fridays, we have a special treat. Today is venerdì gnocolar (Gnocchi Friday) in Verona, the big day on which Carnival is celebrated here.
Each year the “host” of the festival is Papa Gnocco, who looks more like Santa, if santa wore a colorful outfit:
Papa Gnocco, 2017
There’s a parade …
.. plus a tradition to eat gnocchi (potato dumplings) for lunch. As usual when we make it here for this festival, we willingly followed tradition:
gnocchi with ragu d’asino
Gnocci with marascapone cheese and sausage
With a few cornmeal and raised fried doughballs through in for a traditional Veronese Carnival season dessert:
Corn meal fried dough with currants
Today’s weather wasn’t perfect parade weather, but at least the rain only sprinkled, it never came down in a deluge. However, the gray skies were not as festive or as photogenic as the bright, sunny day that greeted us in February 2009 when we came to Verona on venerdì gnocolar for the very first time. Here’s a link to an old video montage of the 2009 parade I made (with a special soundtrack added) from footage Chris shot that day.
If you want still more photos/videos from the parade on sunnier days in the past, you can check out the links below.
- Post from 2011 about Papa del Gnoco, the “leader’ of the celebrations
- Post from 2011 about the Verona Carnival celebration in general
- Videos from Verona’s 2009VenerdìGnoccolar parade:
Enjoy and Buona Feste!
The parade pictures were exceptionally interesting. They were so different, so robust, so colorful. I think Italy goes in big for parades the year around, don’t they? The human masks were striking and I wondered if they represented certain prominent people?