Happy 4th of July!

I'm happy to report that I finally took down the dingy little flags I had hanging outside of the house and mounted a real flag over Memorial Day weekend. So I'm proud of my stars and stripes!

We had invited my parents and parents-in-law over for dinner. On Friday, I unfroze the rest of the beef tenderloin we had from DJ's birthday to have as the main course. That was the only firm plan I had for dinner until this morning.

This morning, I was trying to decide what else we would have with said tenderloin, but was striking out on ideas. Because DJ had asked earlier, "TV on?", we had Food Network showing. The Neely's were on, and they showed a recipe for bacon wrapped asparagus. Huh.... Ok, done. Asparagus and bacon were put on the grocery list. In my wanderings on foodnetwork.com, I saw some recipes with cornbread in them. That made me decide to make Northern-style cornbread as I hadn't had it in awhile, and it sounded good to me. I also saw an Ina Garten recipe for a flag cake during my Food Network travels (granted, it was on the home page since it IS 4th of July today)... that gave me another idea for dessert.

My mother-in-law came over to spend the day a few minutes after DJ went to bed for his nap. She helped Steve watch Elektra, who started pulling up (!), so I could start cooking.

First on the agenda, make a box yellow cake (blasphemy!). I tossed that into the oven while I had the cream cheese and unsalted butter softening. Then I prepped the asparagus. I had skewers soaking in water, but the first few skewers proved they were too thick for the delicate asparagus. I had to switch to toothpicks instead. Then I prepped the beef (butter, salt, pepper!), made the icing, and decorated the cake. Finally, I could sit down for a bit before making the cornbread.

Steve grilled the beef to perfection, again. Yummy! Then he grilled the bacon wrapped asparagus... oh my they were AWESOME. Thinking about making that more often, but in a more low fat way (turkey bacon?). And I made the cornbread which came out of the oven just in time for dinner.

We took a short break after dinner, DJ went outside to play and get some energy out with Grandmom, and then came back in and asked for "cake!"

Cake!

Yeah, I know that my version of the cake doesn't look nearly as good as Ina's, but I don't care. For last minute, it turned out great. DJ ate a good sized piece of cake, and only about 1/3rd of it remained. It's healthy - it has fruit on it! ha ha

My parents and my mother-in-law left before Steve (next door) shot off fireworks, but my father-in-law stuck around and we got to watch some. There's a whole lot of paper debris on our driveway - the wind was blowing towards the house. It was nice to see some fireworks; I haven't seen any in awhile. The kids, thankfully, slept right through them.

Happy 4th of July - the U.S. A. rules!!!