For the 4th of July we had a few of our most rock and roll friends over to eat copious amounts of meat and light all of our leftover wedding sparklers on fire.

I made the potato salad from Young & Hungry, which was a favorite dish from when I reviewed it. I also made a big ol' pitcher of Sea Breezes from that same book, and y'all, those things were LETHAL. They taste like juice and go down like juice and are wonderful but watch out.

I also made my favorite herbed spinach dip with pita crisps from the Dorky Yankees and added some cut up melon and King's Hawaiian rolls.

The main dish, though, was tri-tip, which I prepared Santa Maria-style a la Russ Parsons, who claims you can barbeque in a kettle grill in under an hour. Apparently, in Santa Maria, California, you can. It was darn good. A friend brought linguica and hot dogs, too, and a little Boetje's mustard and I was about ready to explode.

Except I had also made dessert- a blueberry and raspberry crumble from Vineyard Harvest, a book I sort of panned when I reviewed it (and the crumble recipe was confusing) but I could not resist the red white and blue-ness of it. Y'all can try it at home without buying Vineyard Harvest by just adding blueberries and raspberries to your standard crumble/cobbler recipe, although the shortbread-y texture of this one was excellent.