Happy 4th of July!

Clipart from http://clipart.edigg.com

It looks like Independence Day will be a scorcher in much of the U.S.A., so be sure to have plenty of iced tea and lemonade around!  Have a barbecue and avoid heating up the house.  Ice cream and popsicles are good, too.  Here are some recipes that sound good for the 4th of July:

Strawberry Lemon Iced Tea
Blueberry Lemonade
Dried Cherry Scones with clotted cream
Roasted Red Pepper Tapenade Crostini
Cold Strawberry Soup 
Mini Apple Tarts
Strawberry Shortcake
Blueberry Cream Cheese tarts

If you want, you can add a few antique recipes to your menu, according to what the Founding Fathers and Mothers might have enjoyed.  There's even an old recipe for Independence Cake, but it sounds like it makes a huge amount ...

Independence Cake
Twenty pounds of flour, fifteen pounds of sugar, ten pounds of butter, four dozen eggs, one quart of wine, one quart of brandy, one ounce of nutmeg; cinnamon, cloves, mace of each three ounces, two pounds citron, currants and raisins, five pounds each, one quart of yeast, when baked frost with loaf sugar, dress with boxwood and gold leaf.
-- from American Cookery by Amelia Simmons, 1814. Rare Books Exhibit from the Richard L. D. & Marjorie J. Morse Dept. of Special Collections, Kansas State University Libraries.

The main thing is to keep cool and stay safe while you celebrate the great nation that America still is!  Our ideals are worth celebrating!

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