In place of this kind of luncheon, the family may be feeding the school orchestra after its morning’s duties. Either playroom or backyard barbecue service will please these teen-agers. A favorite menu consists of hamburgers on toasted buns, milk drinks made in the electric mixer (red-white-and-blue sipper straws for these), and ice cream sundaes. Fixings for the sundaes, in bowls on a tray each with its own spoon, should be chocolate and butterscotch syrups, chopped nuts, whipped cream, maraschino cherries. Consult the band member of your family on whether a big layer cake or cupcakes or cookies is preferred with the sundaes. The proper oblong sundae dishes could be bought or borrowed from a soda fountain for the party. These are a good investment in a teen-age household.
Stars and Stripes Terrace Supper Besides picnics, barbecues, clambakes, and various community social events on Independence Day, the hot holiday encourages even the city-bound hostess to give some kind of a party, for example, a Stars and Stripes Terrace Supper. This might be nothing more strenuous than a cold buffet supper served on the terrace of a small apartment, or if a summer storm descends, in an air-cooled living room.
Menu for a Stars and Stripes Terrace Supper is extendable. In its smaller form it is just right for the city apartment with a kitchenette and rooftop terrace. Enlarged, it can be prepared in a country or suburban kitchen and served buffet or as a sit-down dinner on a large screened porch, terrace, or patio. Small version: ham or lobster mousse on a cold platter set in a bowl of cracked ice, tossed green salad, cheese finger sandwiches, iced watermelon shell filled with chilled watermelon balls, fresh pineapple cubes, honeydew or cantaloupe balls, pitted cherries, seedless grapes, and berries. Enlarged menu: Add one hot dish, such as chicken or meat turnovers with mushroom sauce, or a casserole of hot veal birds, and hot, herb-buttered French bread instead of the sandwiches.
Decoration For buffet or dinner table, use a boldly striped red-whiteand-blue linen or cotton cloth with solid-color blue napkins. Other combinations are a white cloth with both solid-color red and blue napkins, or a solid-color bold blue linen cloth with white napkins bound with red edge.
Put tall hurricane lamp shades around low candlesticks, with blue or red candles; between these lights on the table, have a bouquet of small American flags in a jar. Wrap the jar with white crepe paper, flute top and bottom edges of paper, and tie red-white-and-blue ribbon around it with streamers reaching out in all directions from the jar across the tablecloth (see sketch). At place settings, if it is a sit-down dinner, put small liberty-bell-shaped paper cups, or red-white-andblue paper drums filled with pecans or almonds or red and white mints.
The same good foods can be served on a Fourth of July paper tablecloth, in paper plates and with paper mugs. For favors at this party as well as added decoration, there are imitation firecrackers, some filled with candies, others with salted nuts, or tiny American flags standing on small wrapped boxes of candies.
If ice cream and cake are preferred to the watermelon dessert, bake the cake in a bell-shaped pan, cover it thickly with white frosting, and decorate -it with a rosette of red-white-and-blue ribbon. Ice cream in bell-shaped molds is one more way of adding the Liberty Bell theme to the menu. If you make a freezer of vanilla ice cream, roll it out to the terrace or porch when you are ready to serve it, and scoop out generous portions for everyone. Top the servings with either crushed fresh red raspberries or blueberries for holiday color as well as superb summer flavor.
If this supper is given in the country, in addition to fireworks for the evening, dancing to records or radio is in tune with the day, or a few games of croquet and horseshoe pitching before dark falls.
The city party-giver on the Fourth of July evening with her guests on a tiny terrace can watch across the dark rooftops the scattered remnants of showy fireworks that modern Fourths produce, and listen to new records, the latest from favorite dance bands here and in Paris.
Drop-In Guests on July Fourth Have an icy cold watermelon on hand, or tall glasses of cold lemonade, or iced tea, iced coffee, gingerale with lemon peel in it, cola drinks with piece of fresh lemon or lime in each glass. Serve ice cream with strawberries, if you have these summer favorites in the kitchen. Don’t forget red-white-and-blue sipper straws.