4th of July

After about five years on the less convenient river [for me, the only one that matters] the fireworks came back to the east side (thanks, Mayor de Blasio!) so I decided to throw a party on my rooftop.  It was a great idea until I woke up to rainy skies.  The weather cleared up just in time for the sun to start setting so I cancelled the laying out portion of the party (like people really needed to be subjected to me in a bathing suit anyway) and people started coming over at 4:30 instead of noon.  Thankfully, that gave everyone plenty of time to get boozed up before the fireworks started at around 9:00 so no one really cared that they couldn't see them as planned since they moved all the barges alllll the way downtown.  I hardly cared, myself.  In fact, I didn't have a care in the world because this was the easiest party in party history.  I made the decision to pick up a couple buckets from KFC (or rather, I sent Albert on this chore) and then I made a few sides to round out the spread.

I wanted the menu to have an all-American feel, which to me means classic picnic food.  Fried chicken is a good centerpiece because it's just as good at room temp/cold as it is hot.  That means you can leave it out all afternoon and not have to worry about it.  It's a low maintenance food (if only I could describe more of my friends that way).  For sides we had:

• Corn and black bean salsa.  It's one of my go-to items because it's just canned corn, canned black beans, chopped tomato, chopped onion, cilantro, and jalapeno.  Serve with the Scoops type of Tostitos because they're the best.  This is actually rather healthy when you think about it, something I like to point out since we were eating extra crispy fried chicken.
• Spinach dip...from a jar.  Because why not have one more food item on the table?  I poured it into a real bowl and told everyone I slaved over it, naturally.
• Pimento cheese sandwiches.  I make my own pimento cheese since it's expensive and hard to find in NYC.  And because I think my version is bangin.  I always like to serve mine on mushy white bread because that's how I had it growing up.  That fancy whole wheat oat bread didn't exist in the Konter household til after I left for college.
• Potato salad.  The dressing for mine is 2 parts Greek yogurt with 1 part mayo.  I use the little red potatoes and mix in dill and scallions.  Since I use 0% Greek yogurt this joins the salsa on the healthy side of the table.  If the salsa canceled out the fried chicken, this should help counterbalance the pimento cheese.  
• Cake pops.  Albert gave me a cake pop maker as part of my Xmas/Chanukah present and this party was its innauguration.  I used blue cake mix (when you bite into the cake pop the inside is more of an electric blue than you would think from the pic) and covered with white chocolate and red sprinkles.  I had to get something patriotic in there.

I cooked off the cake the night before, but I managed to decorate them, prepare all the sides, do all the dishes, clean the whole apartment, and shower in about 2 hours.  Since pretty much the whole party took place on the roof, my apartment was nice and clean when I went back inside at the end of the evening.  It is such a good feeling knowing there is absolutely zero mess to clean up.  Cleaning up just doesn't feel American enough.