The KISS principle applies to Fourth of July foods: Keep It Simple, Silly.
Try to pick foods you can make ahead or pick one that can be prepared quickly. You are part of the celebration and should get to enjoy yourself.
Lots of people forget that hot foods need to be kept hot and cold foods need to be kept cold. You can’t just let everything sit on the picnic table for hours. You have to do some prep work to make sure that everything gets to the picnic hot or cold and stays that way. It will help to put some thought into how you are going to store any leftovers.
1. Remind everyone ahead of time to think before opening the cooler. The more you open it, the shorter time the ice will last because the hot air just pours in. Cold food that has become warm loses its appeal.
2. Pack the food you put into the cooler in watertight containers. All those Rubbermaid and Ziplock containers will come in handy for this. I hate soggy food and too often using my favorite bowl as a transport gets water from the melted ice into the food and it is not appealing at all. You can also stretch the length of time the ice will last by adding cold water to it. If you have used waterproof containers, you will have no problems.
3. I prefer to use blue ice packs but every now and then someone forgets to put them back in the freezer. If you will zip-top baggies, or plastic bottles with water and freeze ahead of time, you can use them as cold drinking water as the day goes by.
4. Do not add warm food or room temperature food to a cold cooler. That will greatly reduce the storage time. If you are heading home, then do it. If you still have hours left at the celebration, just figure that for each one you add you will lose 30-60 minutes of time that the cooler will stay cool.
5. Toss leftover marinades. Food borne illness is too great a chance if you have no way to boil it before you store it. I really dislike the idea of having anyone’s memory of a great 4th of July being the emergency room because they got food poisoning. It puts a damper on the whole shebang.
6. Refrigerate any leftover hot foods. If you can put them on ice, then do it immediately. Again, the risk of food poisoning is too great to take chances. If you can, bring an extra cooler with ice just for the hot food leftovers.
