A Retro-Tastic Recipe Event for the 4th and Beyond: Corn & Bologna Boots!

Hey kids! There's still a lot of picnic and barbecue time left in this holiday weekend, and you can't make a better personal culinary choice than creating a genuine, authentic piece of edible Americana, like these irresistible corn and bologna boots. I can assure you, they're every bit as good as they look. This hot mixture ain't your grandpa's stuff. 

Do you want to surprise and delight your friends and family this July 4th? Of course you do! And you will if you show up at the annual picnic with a big pile of corn and bologna boots, a dish that truly symbolizes America's forgotten culinary past and spirit of enterprise. Just imagine the smiles and looks of shock on everyone's face when you present them with this  hot "knife and fork" sandwich instead of that boring old red-white-and-blue cake you usually bring!

Spiked Strawberry Rhubarb Lemonade

Ah, summer picnics. Humidity, sunburn, flies, mosquitos, ants, warm beer, screaming children, and the threat of listeria in every mayonnaise-soaked bite. When it's a million degrees outside, I would really prefer to eat inside. There's only one way to get through these sweaty ordeals of Americana: drink.

And so this is why, when the theme of this month's Creative Cooking Crew challenge - hosted as ever by the lovely Joan of Foodalogue and Lazaro of Lazaro Cooks - turned out to be picnic foods, I knew that my "food" was going to be of the potent liquid variety.

Muffaletta Tartlets with Olive Salad, Cajun Chips, & Hibiscus Lavender Lemonade for the May 5 Star Picnic Makeover

I am not a fan of the sort of picnic where people have to sit on the  ground getting leg cramps and wishing there was a place to wash their sticky hands, all the while having to swat away nasty stinging bugs and crawling things.  No, thanks! I prefer my nature to be cultivated. I like civilation and cities and sinks and flushing toilets. But that's not to say that I don't love picnic food. Quite the contrary!

So when I found out that the challenge for the May 5-Star Makeover cooking group - led as ever by the lovely and talented  Natasha of 5 Star Foodie and the prolific Lazaro of Lazaro Cooks! - was to come up with a a gourmet version of picnic food, I immediately knew the direction I would take, if not the specific dishes I would make. I would create a lovely picnic that one would want to eat at a comfy table, in a garden, mere steps away from hot and cold running water.  And that's exactly how Poppa Trix and I enjoyed this little feast. (You can have a picnic in your own backyard, right?)