Saturday will be the Fourth of July. Since it is on a Saturday this year, I can enjoy a day off and a picnic with the Illinois relatives. They are visiting this week, and the extended family always gets together when they come to the Dells.

However, since this is a patriotic and historic holiday, I think we should have some of the foods enjoyed in Colonial America. Gen. George Washington is said to have enjoyed a glass of spruce beer. Spruce beer is made with spruce twigs among other ingredients. I am not sure how to make it, and somehow I do not think the local breweries will be making any spruce beer anytime soon. We do have an adequate number of spruce trees in the area should anyone want to venture into the business of making spruce beer.

My relatives, although not me, will be popping the tops on the bottles or cans of more well-known brands such as Miller or Budweiser.

Another alcoholic beverage that perhaps should accompany a Fourth of July celebration is rum. Revolutionary War soldiers got a ration of rum every day. They were advised to mix it with water, but today, we have many other mixes that we mix with rum. Few people drink a daily ration of it daily either, thank heavens.

The soldiers in that period also got a daily ration of beans and a little salt pork or beef. Beans, baked these days, are still around and are commonly a part of a picnic. I found a recipe online to make baked beans in a crock pot. The recipe is probably not any easier to do than cooking baked beans in the oven, but once mixed up, I can walk away from them for seven hours.

A delicacy that might have been served during an early Fourth of July celebration was calf’s head stew. I cannot imagine serving a calf’s head to my relatives or even fixing one. I do not even want to eat fish that still has it is head on. I want meat that bears no resemblance to the animal it came from.

Instead of calf’s heads, we will most likely have hamburgers, brats—we are a Wisconsin family for the most part—or hot dogs. We might have chicken, but I doubt steak will be served since these gatherings tend to have quite a number of people attending.

If we have hamburgers, brats or hot dogs, they will be served with buns, fresh from the grocery store. Not many of us these days bake our own bread or hamburger buns, and if we do, we would not dream of serving the bread the Revolutionary War era soldiers ate. That bread was made with only flour and water so it would keep a long time, and even then, soldiers frequently had a few worms with their bread.

Today’s Fourth of July picnic is not complete without potato salad, but signers of the Declaration of Independence probably did not have potato salad. The potato is native to South America and was taken to Europe by the early Spanish Conquistadors. However, it did not gain popularity until the 1800s when the Irish began growing their potato crops were struck by a blight resulting in famine.

I do not make potato salad. I suppose I could but that was always what my mother made. She went all the way to homemade with it including making her own mayonnaise for it. Miracle Whip or Hellman’s is the only mayonnaise I know how to use. Besides, I am not a big fan of potato salad.

To keep our picnic in the spirit of Colonial America, we could have cucumbers and greens that can be grown here. Since California was not part of Colonial America, iceberg lettuce should not be on the menu.

Tomatoes would also not be on the menu in Colonial America. They were introduced later but for a long time people believed they were poisonous. I enjoy homegrown tomatoes, but mine at least have not even bloomed yet. It will be August before they are on a menu for a picnic.

Dessert is easier to do since blueberries, raspberries and strawberries would have been available in Colonial America, and if you check for dessert recipes for the Fourth many recipes make use of those berries. Throw in some whipped cream or cream cheese and you can make a red, white and blue dessert to celebrate the Fourth.

Now that I have made myself extremely hungry writing a column about food, I think I need to get a snack or two to tide me over until Saturday. Happy eating on July 4.

Kay Lapp James is editor of the Wisconsin Dells Events. Contact her at wde-editorial@capitalnewspapers.com or call (608) 254-8327, ext. 3567.