I’m on vacation this week, visiting my parents for the 4th. We went shopping on Wednesday to get all the usual holiday cookout fixin’s: hot dogs (and veggie dogs, among my mock-meat vices because the taste is nearly indistinguishable from the meat variety), potatos for potato salad, etc. We were planning for a nice day of sitting in the sun, sipping mojitos. Of course, it was raining when I got up in the morning, and proceeded to be cool, damp, and cloudy all day. We all felt that this was horribly unfair and probably unpatriotic of the weather to behave this way. But, the weather didn’t respond much to our complaints.
So we revised our plans to include a lot of baking.
My parents don’t have as big a garden as they used to, but they did put in some herbs and tomatoes this year. Dad was inspired to make something with a lot of fresh dill in it. We found a lovely recipe for dill and cottage cheese bread, which we proceeded to make. I don’t bake a lot of bread, but it’s always fun when I do; bread is among the more magical foods to make at home. There’s an art to it, which I haven’t developed yet, but even though it takes a lot of effort, it’s invariably worth it to have warm-from-the-oven bread. This recipe didn’t require much kneading, and we baked it on a cookie sheet, which means we came out with a lovely artisan-looking loaf. The bread became dinner, along with tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, goat cheese, and good Spanish olive oil.
For dessert… well, somehow we ended up with a bag of key limes, so we made mini key-lime meringue tarts. Pie is another mysterious field of cooking to me – delicious, but mostly unfamiliar. Dad tells me that pie-making runs in my family, and I’m somewhat inclined to set aside some time and learn how to make pies right. Our pies came out very well for having been a conglomeration of a few different recipes. We juiced a whole lot of limes, mixed up custard and meringue, and ended up with pies so sweet and sour and tasty that it was difficult to eat a whole one. Each of us ate a whole one anyway, while we watched the fireworks and the Boston Pops on tv.
It was hardly a traditional Fourth of July celebration, but what’s a better way to celebrate any holiday than baking a lot of delicious food and then eating it?