This Fourth of July, in celebration of our country’s 250th anniversary, let’s make an American flag sheet cake – with rows of carefully sliced and diced blueberries and strawberries, with earnestly spread fields of whipped cream icing. Who can resist a good sheet cake? This is a big day for our country, worthy of cake. We, the people with fewer slicing skills, can also gobble up heaping bowls of glistening fat orbs of juicy berries, bursting with vibrant color and oozing with local flavor. Bring on the farmers’ market gems of blueberries, strawberries, cherries, and red, furry raspberries, with a generous handful of blackberries as we remember our childhoods where we slunk away from the parental units long enough to strip the neighbor’s berry bushes of warm, sweet, dusty berries that we crammed into our sticky, greedy maws. If you want to add a dollop of sweet, homemade whipped cream, I think that is a fine idea. Maybe a saucer of crisp Pepperidge Farm Bordeaux cookies will be on offer. Or a scoop of vanilla ice cream, if you planned ahead.
There are so many delicious ways to salute the red, white and blue. Look out for the Tall Ships. Enjoy a backyard full of fireflies. Does your town have a parade with the marching band? Maybe some sparklers would be fun, too. I can skip the fireworks this year – it’s too hot around here – and we have water restrictions. Luke the wonder dog was never a fan of the loud fireworks. He was happier when we stayed inside. Though he’d never refuse a stray hot dog…
In the foreign country that is the past, when the children were young, and we weren’t quite so jaded and worn down by politics, our old neighborhood held an annual Fourth of July celebration. We decorated our bikes, scooters, red wagons, and strollers with crepe paper streamers, bunting, baseball cards, and small flags. Then we strolled in a motley parade down the main street. Later in the day, more importantly, everyone brought a covered dish to share in someone’s back yard. We would all admire one friend’s signature centerpiece every year: the ceremonial red, white and blue cake. She baked a simple vanilla sheet cake and decorated it with a bucket o’whipped cream, and a precise arrangement of blueberries with some snappy red waves of strawberries, sliced with surgical skill and arranged just so. It was the annual crowd pleaser. We’d light a couple of sparklers and feel patriotic. And then we fall on the cake like a pack of wolves. Forget about always having room for Jell-o, give us Red White and Blue Cake, even though we had already stuffed our suburban bellies with all the standard cookout goodies. You know the drill: potato salad, cole slaw, deviled eggs, pickles, watermelon, beans, burgers, weenies…
Here is another homage to our founders:
(Thinking of George Washington) Cherry Pie
Pre-fab pie crust
4 cups fresh cherries, pitted
1 cup white sugar
4 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 cup water
Take the pie crust out of the packaging. Recycle the plastic, please. Bake as per directions.
Pit the cherries (very important!) and arrange most of them in the baked crust. Reserve about 1/3 cup.
Mash remaining cherries, and combine with sugar in a medium saucepan. Cook in a saucepan over medium heat and bring to a boil, stirring frequently.
In a small bowl, whisk together cornstarch and water. Gradually stir cornstarch mixture into the boiling cherries. Reduce heat and simmer mixture until thickened, about 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Allow the cherry mixture to cool slightly and then pour it over the cherries in the pie shell. Canned cherries never tasted like this!
Chill for several hours before serving.
Here is a fruit salad mélange that will use every bit of fruit you can find at the farmers’ market: Summer Fruit Salad
I could do this salad without the bananas, which always seem to get brown and sticky for me: Fruit Salad
Enjoy the Fourth of July. Hug your children. Walk the dog. Say hello to your neighbors. Don’t litter. Be kind. Cherish our country.
“You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.”
-Erma Bombeck
