4th of July

Hello people, I'm sorry I'm so behind on blogging. No, really! I am. I will try to make it up to you now.

Ahem.

The week of the 4th was a great food week here at Stuck in Your Beard. Busy and great. Sunday was the holiday, Monday was Grandma's birthday (which we celebrated a few days later) and Monday night dinner, and the next day was my first day of summer school. (I will SOON be a degree-having individual. But never soon enough...) So it was a busy week, and I will start with the beginning. Sunday:

This year we brought back old holiday traditions for the 4th, both in our venue and menu. (Accidental rhyme, I assure you...) Dad, Mom, Thom, and I all went out to Great Meadow to eat, drink, and watch fireworks. Our awesome neighbors came with us as well and brought their two young children. It was a blast!

Back when I was a kid, my dad would always make these giant baked cold-cut sandwiches when we went to Great Meadow for the 4th. They would be delicious, warm, and cheesy, and a pretty weird thing to bring to a picnic. But we loved it. It hasn't been done in quite a few years, so I decided to bring it back vegan style.

I decided to make two of them---a recreation of the original sandwich made with fake lunchmeats (peppered tofurkey, smoked(?) tofurkey, and fake bologna) and (Daiya mozz)cheese, and one with grilled veggies (mushrooms, red bell pepper, zucchini, squash, eggplant, onions, spinach) and cheese. They were both delicious. Here they are being assembled:




And here they are baked, cut up, and on a plate:





And as you can see I also made (red, white, and blue) potato salad and Mom made fruit salad.

We also made a big pitcher of sangria and brought a lot of beer. Whee! Here we are having fun:
Me and Mom-


Thom and his (awesome)hat-


My Dad playing checkers with our young neighbor-


America-


We are all fun people so it was quite the fun time. So fun, in fact, that Thom and I ate midnight sandwiches when we got home. The leftover baked sandwiches were SO GOOD heated up in the toaster oven. They got nice and crispy, as seen here:


Bonus pic: This is what I look like when I'm eating a sandwich at midnight.


Haha. So, that's it for Sunday. It was definitely a great holiday experience, I barely even felt the need to voice any political outrage about anything. Kidding! (Maybe.) Well...this is pretty long already, so I should probably just start a new post for Monday. See ya!