This OP is half GQ and half MPSIMS.
GQ:
Do you have the national equivalent of the Thanksgiving turkey on the 4th of July or are there regional variations? I’m thinking mainly BBQs, given the time of year, but are there other ‘classics’?
MPSIMS:
What will YOU be having?
Burgers and dogs, hot off the grill where I’m going, although I’m gonna bring some boiled shrimp. Beans, wine and beeras well, of course.
Burgers, dogs, beer brats, chicken, various salads (potato, pasta, oriental chicken salad). There will be other food too, those are just the dishes I know of now. We have a big neighborhood blast every year, so there’s tons of food, beer, pop, and juice. We also have quite a fireworks display.
Apple pie!!
We had a little luch thing at work. Hot dogs, chips, potato salad, slaw, and cheese fondue.
(I made the fondue–I don’t really like hot dogs!)
From the looks of it…no ONE national fare, then?
(Everyone having fun so far? :))
Ribs, chicken and smoked sausage, all BBQ’d by moi. Oh and I think the wife is making a salad 
I forgot to mention watermelon…
omni-not, I guess you’re correct, there’s is no “standard” meal on July 4th. It’s a general mix of BBQ, hot dogs, burgers, potato salad – picnic foods, in other words. And a whole lot of beer. Apple pie, though, is viewed as a patriotic USA dessert. I’d be interested in knowing how that came about - Zenster, can you answer that question for us?
Thanks, Zenster. I searched far and wide for the answer, and one of my internet searches came up with a quite amusing post, which follows. I have absolutely no idea what the man is talking about, but it sounds SO much like the SDMB on a Saturday night.
APPLE PIE
By Samuel Engle Burr, Reply by Gordon S. Wood
In response to The Revenge of Aaron Burr (February 2, 1984)
To the Editors:
Reference: “The Revenge of Aaron Burr” by Gordon S. Wood, your issue of February 2, 1984, pages 23-26.
It would appear that you—the Editor—asked Mr. Wood to do a review of the work of Dr. Mary-Jo Kline on “The Papers of Aaron Burr.” Also, that Mr. Wood submitted a mms. to you and that you published it. But his essay is not a review of Dr. Kline’s publication.
Instead of a review, Mr. Wood has given you a diatribe against Col. Aaron Burr. Perhaps someone else should do a review of Dr. Kline’s work.
The essay which you have published is (in our opinion) biased and slanted. In paragraph after paragraph, Col. Burr is down-graded, misrepresented and maligned.
We are led to ask: “Did Mr. Wood actually read the material which Dr. Kline edited?” But he leaves no doubt about this: Mr. Wood is anti-Burr and any evidence that Burr was a patriotic, supportive and contributing citizen of the USA is belittled, down-graded or brushed aside.
There is no reference to the fact that the Democratic-Republican party carried the national election of 1800 in the State of New York (and therefore in the nation) because of Burr’s masterful management. Without those 12 electoral votes for Jefferson and Burr in New York, the election of 1800 would have gone to Adams and Pinckney. Who would claim that Jefferson carried New York? It was Burr who was responsible for the result.
It was Burr who presided over the impeachment trial of Assoc. Justice Samuel Chase of the US Supreme Court. It was a fair trial. Chase was acquitted of all of the charges brought against him. So, Jefferson failed in his attempt to gain control of the federal judiciary. This in itself should assure Burr a high place of honor in American history.
Col. Aaron Burr was a friendly, compassionate and considerate man. He was deeply interested in the welfare of his immediate family (his wife and daughter), in his associates in the law and in politics and in the welfare of the United States as a nation. None of this is apparent in Gordon Wood’s essay.
Mr. Wood finds fault with Burr because he did not write any long and tiresome articles about his political philosophy, his objectives for society, his religious tenets, etc. His beliefs in these fields were evident in his way of life and did not require written expression. History includes more than the written word. It was quite evident that he believed in political equality, rights and education for women, banking free from politics and that he opposed Negro slavery, etc., etc.
Samuel Engle Burr, Jr.
President General
The Aaron Burr Association
Hightstown, New Jersey
Gordon Wood replies:
It is comforting to learn that Aaron Burr has such an alert organization to look after his reputation. But President General Burr is mistaken to think that I wrote “a diatribe against Col. Aaron Burr.” Quite the contrary. I was praising Burr for contributing (ahead of his time, no less) to the great vote-getting, interest-promoting, and spoils-collecting traditions of American democratic politics—the very sorts of traditions that have made America’s immensely successful political system a marvelous mystery to the entire outside world. What could be better evidence that “Burr was a patriotic, supportive and contributing citizen of the USA”? A stuffy Founding Father like George Washington could not hold a candle to Burr in popular politicking. Washington could never have delivered a state the way Burr delivered New York in 1800; Washington didn’t even like political parties. Aaron Burr is as American as apple pie.
We are cooking Ribeye on the grill. Mmmmm. Actually he is cooking and I’m playing on the computer. 
We had planned to grill out, but the weather gods had other plans - torrential rains, hail, high winds, tornadoes - and so we are postponing our cookout till tomorrow. 
Oops - hit submit too quickly. Meant to say that standard fare here is steak, hot dogs, or hamburgers and corn-on-the-cob, all cooked on the grill.
Where are you at, and can you send some of that rain over to Texas??
Gasp. We are human BBQ about right now.
Blonde, do you post using positrons? So many of my replies are annihilated when they are in proximity to yours that I’m beginning to wonder about this. I can only suppose my food writing whets the hamsters’ appetites or something. It is amazing how many posts I have lost in the last few days.
For the second time, here’s my reply about the patriotic roots of apple pie.
I’d wager that apples (and apple pie) became associated with our patriotic roots due to their agricultural characteristics. Johnny Appleseed legends aside, apples are not an entirely seasonal crop, there are numerous harvests of them throughout the year. Unlike most other fruits that are suitable for pie making, apples have the virtue of an extremely long shelf life. They are comparable to cabbages and potatoes in terms of remaining wholesome and intact during prolonged storage. Softer fruits, especially drupes like peaches and plums, would rot quickly if they were not preserved through dehydration.
In the colonial era, refrigeration most often took the form of a root cellar. Apples could be kept for several months under such conditions. A fairly tough skin made them relatively impervious to all but the most determined insects. Although they would tend to lose some moisture during storage, the malic acid content probably helped to preserve their flesh better than many other types of fruit. Any lost water could be restored during the food preparation process.
When you look at the ingredients for a traditional apple pie, it becomes rather clear that here was a toothsome dessert that could be assembled from extremely long lived pantry items. Although butter is fashionable in crusts today, lard has always been the more common (and less costly) shortening ingredient. Lard was a common byproduct of animal slaughtering and had many uses besides baking. Many modern cooks still swear by lard’s superior frying and baking properties. Wheat flour was also easily stored for long spans of time. We have already seen that apples could be kept over extended periods. All that remains to make the pie are ingredients like salt, cinnamon and a bit of honey to sweeten the more tart varieties of apple.
It’s my guess that the relative abundance of apples year 'round, combined with their desirable storage properties made apple pie an excellent candidate for the common people’s dessert. The simple and low cost ingredients made their manufacture easy for even the most inexperienced of cooks. A finished pie also had the virtue of being sterilized by dint of the baking process. Combined with its intrinsic sugar content, a baked pie could easily keep for a week in the traditional cupboard or colonial pie safe.
A final point may also shed some light on why the apple pie became so ubiquitous in American cuisine. However much we tend to view early America as the land of plenty, hard times were most certainly a lot more common in days past than we modern folk might like to think. Dessert is served at the end of a meal for a rather specific reason. Sweets tend to trigger a shutdown of the digestive system’s gustatory processes. Even if a meal was light on the starch and meat portions, a slab of apple pie provided a good dose of sugar to quell any residual hunger. For a hard working farm hand, the crust’s lard was merely another protein source and such a satisfying finish to a meal was probably more than welcome in any but the most well-to-do households.
Quite instructive…
And what will the Zenster family be having, pray tell?
And what’s with Blonde thanking you before you even posted? :dubious: SDMB screw up?
Ohio - and we’d be happy to send some of the rain your way!
My original posting of the patriotic background surrounding apple pie, preceded Blonde’s historical tract. She has already witnessed a few of these “stealth” posts. Another of them was in CuriousCanuck’s dessert thread last night. A while back there was a BBQ thread in Cafe society wherein my post was hamstered into oblivion.
In fact, I do believe I’ve just coined the term for this odd phenomenon. From now on I shall refer to such posts as being “hamstered.” The syllable “ham” gives it the right comedic connotation. The suffix of, “… ered” is sonant in a way reminiscent of, “hammered.” This is likewise appealing, as something is hammering these posts into nonexistence.
Hamstered, I like it. The word has a certain ring to it.
As to what I’ll be having (no family, just yet), I believe it will consist largely of cordite fumes, well done.
I wish upon those hamsters the hell I just encountered in a neighborhood 4th of July party. I was asked what I’d like to drink - and the options were Crown Royal & Coke, or Jack & Coke. We high-tailed it out of there pretty quick. Zenster, I think I saw another of your posts go :: poof :: tonight. Makes one wonder, eh?
Fireworks on the way!
Carne asada tacos, lime-marinated chicken, Bohemia beer and homemade roasted tomato salsa at the pug house (we just had burgers last weekend).
We had grilled chicken, hot dogs, potato salad, coleslaw, deviled eggs, three bean salad, a jello mold, sugar snap peas, peach cobbler, pecan pie, peanut butter pie, and watermelon.
I’m full.