Shop at Palisades Farmers Market for Your Independence Day Feast

The easiest way for some people to throw a party is to order platters from a restaurant or a supermarket. For others, only home-cooked food will do.

But with busy lives, how to find the time to do any cooking?

A friend complains when the kids want to know what's to eat, she throws up her hands and says, "Ok, let's go out." But on the Fourth, it's more fun if the food is home-cooked.

One solution is to use easy-to-make recipes so you're not stuck in the kitchen. And to give you ideas, take a walk around the Palisades Farmers Market and pick out  and vegetables that take no time at all to prepare. 

A sangria-style wine cooler or a fruit salad would be easy to make with the market's abundance of fresh cherries, blueberries, Fuji apples, pluots, white peaches, nectarines and Valencia oranges. Yum.

Don't forget about decorating your table (or picnic blanket!). In the market there are so many in bloom.

- John Sweredowski will offer friendly advice and a helping hand as you pick out leafy greens for a salad--he'll encourage you to think outside the box by showing you bunches of nettles, mustard greens and purslane. If you are an arugula fan, John has fat bunches with broad leaves. He also has sweet peppery watercress and squash blossoms.

 - the tomatoes, carrots and asparagus are always sweet. The finglerling and sweet potatoes are good for baking and grilling. Mr. Yang's Persian cucumbers make a crunchy salsa.

Underwood Family Farms - the bi-color corn (yellow and white) are available again, along with leafy greens, radishes and beets, as well as green cabbage, perfect for coleslaw.

Givens Farm - pick up Italian parsley and leafy greens to make a tossed green salad.

Capay Organic - has early season heirloom tomatoes, pricey at 3 lbs for $10.00, but so colorful they would make an attractive centerpiece.  Enjoy them sliced, drizzled with olive oil, seasoned with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and sprinkled with fresh basil leaves.

Tropical Seafood - has a good selection of fish, including sole, salmon, swordfish and halibut for grilling, sauteing or baking. The large peeled and deveined shrimp are especially nice wrapped in bacon, marinated in olive oil and seasoned with sea salt and pepper, skewered and grilled.

If you want to prepare a few dishes but not the whole meal, check out the  at the market. Their home-cooked food is the next-best-thing to making it yourself.

Gunnar & Jake's Gourmet Pickles - sample before you buy and buy you will after you've had a taste of Kristi Stefansky-Murray's pickled Hungarian peppers, green beans, dill cukes, jalapenos, beets and turnips. 

Sumako at Sweredowski Farms - uses the farm's produce to make a summer time treat: squash blossoms stuffed with ricotta and roasted tomatoes.

The Heritage Kitchen - for appetizers and desserts, former food historian Ekythe Preet sells a good selection of cheeses from small farms, homemade jams and savory chutneys.  Preet also has an excellent selection of pastries, including Devonshire cream scones and gluten-free amaretti meringue cookies with almonds, flourless chocolate mini-cakes and organic brown rice crispy squares. Also gluten-free are Ekythe's torts, one with orange and almonds (a Sephardic favorite), another made with polenta and almonds with a lemon flavor. Both are moist and delicious. 

- for the holiday Denise Assad has baked lattice-topped cherry pies as well as her regular staple of apple pies, chocolate dipped macaroons and a two-layer coconut cake with cream cheese frosting, to name a few of her treats. For a savory snack, she will have on hand freshly baked, flaky spinach and feta spanakopita that would look delicious on a dining room table or tucked away in a picnic basket. Given how labor intensive cherry pies are--imagine the effort it takes to pit hundreds of cherries--Denise could only pull off such an effort because Megan, her assistant, has joined her in the kitchen.

Have a great Fourth of July!