Whether your Fourth of July celebration is a family affair, a neighborhood gathering or a party with friends, you’ll want to enjoy great food as well.  This mix-and-match menu will help you get everything planned for a great party!

Pick one or two options from each section and you’re all set.

Appetizers

• Chips and dip: onion or spinach dip,  fresh salsa, 7-Layer Dip or guacamole
• Vegetable platter

Main Courses

• Anything on the grill: hamburgers, hot dogs, grilled chicken or Weight-Watcher-friendly kebabs
• For the vegetarians in the crowd, try the best ever vegetarian burgers
• Pulled pork especially if you’re in the south!

Side Dishes

• Pasta salad or a Make Ahead Layered Salad
• Potato Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette (video) or try Ed Livine's Potato Salad that's made with mayo and hard cooked eggs
• Corn on the cob
• Southern tomato pie, sort of like an eggless tomato quiche.
• Broccoli salad with black olives and feta
• Baked Beans
• Get the kids involved in helping you make deviled eggs

Very Berry Summer Pie, photo courtesy of Kelly Wright, Sass & Veracity blog

Desserts

• Fruit Salad: Try it in a smiling watermelon bowl!
• Watermelon
• “Patriotic” desserts, like the famous flag cake, made with white icing, strawberry “stripes” and blueberry “stars”
• Rhubarb strawberry crisp, made from local and healthy ingredients
• Very berry summer pie (pictured above): We found this recipe on Kelly Wright's Sass and Veracity blog. With a dollop of whipped cream, it’s red white and blue! Thanks Kelly, for letting us use your mouthwatering photo!
• Berry trifle, also with the colors of our flag
• Strawberry shortcake: quite simple when you use biscuit mix
• Ice Cream Sandwiches, frozen or no-bake pies

Drinks

• Make sure your friends and family stay hydrated with lots of water!
• Lemonade, limeade, or strawberry lemonade – the old-fashioned way
• Iced Tea
• Beer

If you are new to startcooking, or are a regular visitor here, please consider subscribing for free.

Blanching vegetables means to plunge them quickly into boiling water - for just a minute or two - then immediately stick the vegetables into a bowl of ice water (often referred to as an ice bath). If you are serving cooked vegetables cold, this technique will ensure that they will maintain their beautiful colors.

I am going to demonstrate how to do this using asparagus. The same method would work for green beans, yellow beans, broccoli, carrots, and many other vegetables as well.

Wash and trim the asparagus.  (This link will also show you how to wash, trim and How to Cook Asparagus.)

I always blanch (and cook) asparagus in a frying pan. The spears fit better and they cook more evenly in a frying pan. Start by boiling a kettle of cold water and then pouring it into the frying pan.

Bring the water in the frying pan to a boil and add about one Tablespoon of salt to the water.

Using a pair of tongs, carefully add the asparagus to the pan.

Set the timer for 2 minutes. It may take a bit more or less time depending on the thickness of your asparagus. After 2 minutes, run one spear under cold water and then taste it to see if it is cooked to your liking. If you cook green vegetable too long they will turn a very “muddy’ green color (YUK!).

Have your “ice bath” (which is just a bowl of icy cold water) and a clean dish towel ready for when the timer goes off.

Using a pair of tongs, lift the asparagus out of the boiling water and put it directly into the ice bath.

This totally stops the cooking process, and the color stays that nice bright green. After a minute or two, lift the asparagus out of the icy water and onto a clean dish towel to drain.

If you are cooking more green vegetables, you can use the same boiling water that you cooked the asparagus in to cook the other vegetables.

Green beans will only take about 1 minute and 30 seconds to blanch.

For a change of pace try blanching some vegetables when you serve your next Vegetable and Dip Platter (video).

Enjoy!

If you are new to startcooking, or are a regular visitor here, please consider subscribing for free.

No-Bake Chocolate Cheese Cake Pie

All beginner cooks are terrified of making a pie. If you have zero experience at pie making, a frozen or "no-bake" pie recipe (using a pre-made crust) is a good place to start. (The ten no-bake pies listed below are all perfect recipes for a beginner cook!)

Buying or Making The Crust

Many ice cream pies or no-bake pies call for a graham cracker crust. You can buy a graham cracker pie shell in the baking section of the grocery store or try making a graham cracker crust yourself. (These cracker crusts can also be made with many other sweet cracker/cookies like oreo cookies, ginger snaps, vanilla wafers, etc.)

Or you can buy a ready-made pie shell, usually found in the freezer section of the grocery store.

These pie shells will have to get baked and cooled before filling them.

For those of you ready to tackle the pie dough making challenge, our friend Heidi at the Ward Street Bistro has a wonderful pie crust recipe that does not require "rolling out" the dough.

This "Press in the Pan" pie dough recipe looks great for anyone intimated by a rolling pin!

Easy Pie Recipes:

Ice Cream Pie
You can concoct a very simple pie without a recipe. Buy a ready-made pie crust (or make a graham cracker one) and a tub of ice cream or frozen yogurt. Set the ice cream out to soften. Once you can scoop it easily, fill the pie crust, smooth the top and add any toppings you want (nuts, whipped cream, chocolate sauce). Then put it back into the freezer until serving time.

Pudding Pies
Similarly, you can make a custom pie with pudding and fruit. Just buy a box of pudding mix – chocolate, vanilla, or another flavor – follow the directions, and pour it into a ready-made pie crust. Top it with sliced bananas, strawberries, or whatever you like. Refrigerate the pie until you are ready to serve it.

Frozen Lemonade Pie
The folks over at Baked Perfection tried this recipe (from the Food Network show Down Home With the Neely’s) for a Fourth of July party and fell in love with it. Set in a graham cracker crust, its sweet, lemony filling calls for frozen lemonade concentrate, whipped cream and sweetened condensed milk. An easy alternative to a baked lemon meringue pie!

Nutter Butter Frozen Pie
Hello, peanut butter fans? It’s your dream pie calling. This one has a crust made of crushed Nutter Butter cookies (but feel free to substitute a pre-made one) and a frosty peanut butter and cream cheese filling.

Frozen Oreo Pie
The name says it all!

Frozen Blueberry Pie
This pie is not frozen in the sense that it sits in the freezer; it’s a baked blueberry pie that calls for frozen blueberries and a frozen pie crust. I’m including it because summer is the time for blueberries (even frozen) and this is a very easy version of your typical fruit pie that calls for crust made from scratch.

Chocolate Fudge Pie
One bite of this decadent pie and you'll never look at silken tofu the same way again. It's one of the keys to this pie's creamy fudginess.

No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Banana Tofu Pie
Here's another recipe that involves tofu. This pie uses either a homemade or store-bought graham cracker crust to hold an intense filling. It takes about 15 minutes to make, then goes in the fridge or freezer for a couple of hours.

No-Bake Mango Pie
Anything mango is great in the summer. This one contains mango puree (which the author found at an Indian grocery store), whipped cream and mascarpone cheese.

How to Peel a Mango

No-Bake Key Lime Pie
A can of frozen limeade concentrate is what gives this simple pie its lime flavor.

Easy Coconut Banana Cream Pie takes just 20 minutes to make! This pie will need 4 hours in the refrigerator to set. It's worth the wait!

My No-Bake Chocolate Cheese Cake Pie (shown above) is a rich chocolaty cheese cake pie that will quickly become a family favorite. It does involves whipping your own heavy cream. (For a quick review on whipping cream, check out my post on How to Make Whipped Cream)

If you are new to startcooking, or are a regular visitor here, please consider subscribing for free.