Day Seven - Happy Fourth of July!

The 4th of July dawned bright and hot and promised to stay that way all day. Today is parade day, and the corps would be performing in two: one in Bristol, RI and the other one in Norwood, MA. Bruno asked that we serve a hearty breakfast because the corps would be on the go all day. When I got up at 5 or so, Jay was already up and making his special biscuits. He let me know that I would be making sausage gravy.
I have made this many times before, but the kind of sausage we had was brown and serve - meaning it is already fully cooked. That presents some problems but I want ahead and sliced up two full sheet pans of sausage links into disks and put them in the oven to brown and hopefully, get a little pork fat out of them for flavor. While they cooked, I grabbed the leftover roux that I had made earlier in the week and made a béchamel sauce to which I would add the browned sausage. I did that, but the little disks of sausage looked weird, so I grabbed the small stick blender and used it to break up the sausage in the gravy. It turned out perfect and everyone really enjoyed it. We also served scrambled eggs and fruit. Before I went to bed the night before, I had made two pans of hash from some onions and left over tater tots. We cooked and served those as well. Right after breakfast, we had to rush the clean up so the kids could pack the food truck so we could go get parked at the site for the Bristol parade.

It took a little while to get situated, but once there, we had to get on making the lunch. We had some leftover cooked chicken strips from the fajita dinner we had a couple of nights before so we thought a buffalo chicken wrap would be a good lunch. I made up a quick buffalo wing sauce (melted butter and Frank's Hot Sauce) and we setup an assembly line to make 320 wraps. We make about 220 chicken wraps before we ran out of chicken, so we switched to some of the leftover tilapia fillets that we had and made about 100 more buffalo fish wraps. We decided to only apply a little of the sauce to the wraps and then offer bottles of sauce so the member could add more if they wanted. If a member was particularly sensitive, we had ranch and blue cheese dressing they could use to cool it down a bit.

The Wrap Assembly Line

When those were complete, Alice Schaible and I went down to try to see some of the parade. We walked a couple of blocks and waited to see the corps arrive. After they reached were we were standing, we decided to follow along and help hand out and refill their water bottles. We only walked along with them a few blocks, they looked and sounded great and the crowd loved them, especially when they played a tune. At the main parade review, they stopped and did a couple of their encore songs which were really great.

The Drum line marching past the waterfront at Bristol, RI.

Once the parade was done the members changed into cooler clothes and came over to the food truck for lunch. The wraps turned out very well and the fish version was popular too, along with the wraps we served watermelon, jello and the usual peanut butter and jelly. I think the members were happy to get a quick meal and some liquid refreshments. After lunch, the food truck was packed up and the caravan headed out from Bristol. The members in their 3 coaches and the Staff bus along with the equipment tractor trailer went to the parade site and the Entertainer, food tractor trailer, pathfinder and some other vehicles went to a nearby strip mall that has a number of stores and restaurants. After the parade, the members would be taken to a nearby Wal-Mart to do some shopping and then would meet up with us at the small mall. Alice noticed that there was an LA Fitness in this mall and went over to inquire if there would be any way we could utilize their facilites to take showers. At that point, we would not be able to shower until we got to the housing site that evening. As it turns out, they were willing to let us all have day passes and we were able to take showers in the 45 minutes before they closed. After that a few of us went shopping and I talked Jay into purchasing a slicing and shredding attachment for the Kitchen-Aide mixer on the truck. I have the same unit and I knew it would be a huge labor saver for slicing or shredding carrots, potatoes, onions or anything like that.

The food crew also was able to have a meal together at the Texas Roadhouse, which was really nice. It was a welcome break for a hectic and busy last couple of days. Later in the evening, I met up with Liam and a few of his baritone friends and I bought them a dinner at Texas Roadhouse too, they enjoyed it after all the hard work they put in marching and playing in two parades. All in all a great 4th of July! The caravan rolled out later that night and headed to our housing site, Burlington High School.

Matt