Traditional fare sparkles for holiday

By VALERIE BANNER
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
The Fourth of July. Does it make you want a hot dog real bad -- to borrow a line from the previews of the "Legally Blonde" sequel?
Well, the woman from that commercial isn't the only one who puts the Fourth and hot dogs together.
Independence Day is often associated with hot dogs, hamburgers and potato salad as much as it is connected with red, white and blue.
Although some Mahoning Valley residents acknowledge that their cooking skills are a bit lacking, others proclaim that their recipes make family and friends ooh and ah as much as the fireworks displays do.
Gladys O'Dea says she's got a special way of making pasta salad that her friends and relatives always enjoy. O'Dea, formerly of Liberty, was in town recently to visit family.
"I make it like a tossed salad with pasta as the lettuce," she says. "I use lots of parmesan cheese, olives, red bell peppers, green bell peppers and cucumbers. All those fresh summer vegetables."
Potato salad
Potato salad seems to be a favorite among area families -- and almost everyone's got their own way to prepare it.
Lori Paolucci of Austintown says she always makes plain old potato salad and insists she doesn't have a special recipe.
Kathy Lee of Liberty says her potato salad is "not like Grandma's."
First, she starts with potatoes that are sliced very finely.
Then, she uses Marzetti's dressing -- "that'll wake anything up" -- and adds some sugar and pickle relish juice.
Janet R. Scarsella of Poland makes a potato salad with a twist, as well. She says her potato salad calls for French dressing, not mayonnaise. "So it doesn't spoil," she points out.
But Wanema Flasher, home economist at the Mahoning County Extension Office, says mayo is not the spoiler it was once thought to be.
"Years ago we said mayonnaise was the problem, but it's not. Things with mayonnaise are not any more susceptible to spoil than anything else," she says.
Food safety
Flasher recommends keeping all foods at room temperature no longer than two hours. And if the temperature reaches 90 degrees or higher (hey, it might!), all food should be put away in an hour, she says.
Flasher also says that backyard grillers should have a meat thermometer handy to check their hamburgers, steaks or chicken.
"The color of the meat is not always an indicator. Meat can still look pink and reach that internal temperature or it can look cooked and not have reached it," she notes.
Poultry should reach 180 degrees; ground meats, 160.
Lee says she cooks her chicken with a special barbecue sauce. She says she starts off with a store-bought sauce, such as Kraft. She then cooks it over the stove while adding lemon, vinegar, brown sugar and hot sauce -- "to enhance the flavor." It's good, but she acknowledges that sometimes it just seems like a way of making more work.
Scarsella says there's one more dish her picnics can't be without: lasagna. "I'm Italian," she explains with a laugh.
Scarsella and the others say the back yard is their choice for a picnic.
Family and friends gather not just for the food, but for the company as well. Most play games -- baseball, volleyball, boccie and badminton -- and sit around and talk.
But Cara Lawson of Champion prefers to head to Cook Forest, Pa., to go camping. She says she and her husband go for the weekend, just the two of them.