The Fourth of July

I am way behind on posting and there has been quite a bit of cooking going on around here.  I am going to start with the 4th of July barbecue this year.

Like last year, my mother did her annual 4th of July barbecue.  This year we thought we'd mix it up a little and decided to make, rather than hamburgers and hot dogs, tuna burger and salmon burger sliders.  The salmon burger was a pretty straight-forward recipe that I think we found somewhere online and the tuna burger was a Thai-style, with cilantro and soy.  Both were very tasty.  We made a cilantro mayonnaise, a wasabi mayonnaise and a chipotle mayonnaise to go along with them.  We found cute little rolls to go with them.  All in all, very successful.

For dessert, my mom found a recipe for a red velvet cake that she liked.  I said she should make it two layers and make one red velvet and the other dye blue, then with the white frosting, it would be red, white and blue.  The thought was taken one step beyond...

We did put whipped-cream filled strawberries on top of the cake.  There was nothing wrong with that.  We also discovered that my niece, Maggie, has no problem helping clean up the whipped cream making process: