Recipe Thursday – 15 American Flag-Themed Foods Your Fourth of July Party Needs

Here’s a Red White and Blue 4th of July Watermelon Bowl Salad recipe to consider making this weekend.  To view all 15 recipes for this holiday weekend click here: http://www.msn.com/en-us/foodanddrink/recipes/15-american-flag-themed-foods-your-fourth-of-july-party-needs/ss-AAc37o2?ocid=DELLDHP#image=1

Red White and Blue 4th of July Watermelon Bowl Salad

You’ll need a watermelon, blueberries and a large jicama (you can substitute apples for the the jicama).

1. Lie a large watermelon on it’s side and slice off the top 1/4. Cut out the fruit inside so that you end up with a watermelon “bowl”. you can take the watermelon out with a melon baller or cut out chunks large enough to slice and then cut stars using a small star shaped cookie cutter.

2. Slice your jicama into 1/4 to 1/2 inch slices. Using a small star shaped cookie cutter or fondant cutter, cut star shapes. You can get these cutter very inexpensively at Michael’s craft store or most other cake decorating shops.  If you don’t have jicama, you could substitute apples for the stars. Just make sure to put them in a bowl of salted ice water for 10 minutes or brush with lemon immediately after you cut them. This will help slow down the browning that occurs when apples are exposed to the air. Jicama is a better choice because it is whiter than apple and won’t brown.

3. Place the cut watermelon, blueberries and star shaped jicama back into watermelon and VOILA you have a star spangled red, white and blue, 4th of July watermelon fruit salad.

OPTIONAL: If you like, you can carve a flag design into the outside of your 4th of July watermelon bowl. Shave off the green rind where you want to carve your flag, Then when you cut away stripes of the flag from the white rind, you will reveal the red fruit for the red stripes. If you are going to do this, do the carving prior to adding the fruit into the watermelon bowl.

OPTION 2: Or, you can use the inside of the rind that you cut off the top and carve a flag into the inside where you can cut away the red fruit to reveal the while rind for the stripes. You could toothpick blueberries into the blue area of the “flag”.

Courtesy of msn.com food and drink and Nita Gill at vegetablefruitcarving.com

About Nita Gill
Nita Gill has been producing detailed, high quality, step-by-step video lessons that teach the art of fruit carving since 2009. Nita has won competitions, judged competitions, appeared on TV and has even carved at the White House. She is pleased to now have thousands happy carving customer/ students in over 60 countries who have taken her video lesson that are designed like live classes, answering the questions that you’ll have as you learn to carve.