I’m about to disappoint you guys.

I can show you the pork butt that Kelly wrapped in banana leaves and cooked over applewood for three, four, five hours in our backyard (sort of - I was excited - it’s blurry). I can show you the potluck spread that dear friends assembled for my birthday, the sliced Cherokee Purple tomatoes, the quiches, the roasted eggplant sprinkled with pine nuts, the rice flecked with olives and tuna, the tiny raspberry and peach pies, the goat cheese drizzled with honey and hazelnuts, basil lemonade, margaritas and brewskies (also all blurry). I am so lucky to have been born in July.

It’s probably tacky to ask your friends to bring their interpretation of summer bounty to your birthday party, but then I don’t care. I’m not always a lady, and we just love potlucks around here. They’re an opportunity to show off, in a giving kind of way.

My contribution was my own birthday cake. Is that cheating? Well, the evidence is gone. I can’t show you a long, metal cookie sheet dripping with condensation, and a crowd of friends licking their fingers. * I just forgot. Maybe it’s better not to document anyway. There are few words to describe these ice cream sandwiches. They’re more like a memory than a reality that you can pin, dissect and describe, a dessert tracing the edge of childhood with a very adult mix of salt and sweet, crunchy and creamy. They taste like the summer you wish you had when you were eight, if it weren’t for your love at that time of unnaturally blue raspberry slushies (guilty as charged). They taste like the summer you are having when you turned 28, a season of cocktails and thunderstorms on the front porch, a new bike and a new favorite place to ride it (thanks, honey) sweaty weekend afternoons working on the house, and nights working through the first through fifth seasons of the Sopranos, courtesy of NetFlix.

Praline Ice Cream Sandwiches adapted from Gourmet, June 2006

Makes 24 sandwiches, more or less. They will be gone before you can count them.

The praline
1 1/4 cup pecans, coarsely chopped
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup sugar

The sandwich layers
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened at room temperature, plus additional for greasing pan
1 1/2 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 large eggs at room temperature
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

The filling
4 pints high-quality vanilla ice cream, softened

First make the praline: Stir together pecans and salt in a small bowl. Spread a sheet of foil on a work surface. Cook sugar in medium-sized pot over medium heat, undisturbed, until it begins to melt. Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until sugar melts into a golden caramel - watch it carefully, so that it doesn’t burn. Add salted pecans, stirring until coated well, then spread on foil and cool completely, about 15 minutes. Peel praline off foil and finely chop with a large heavy chef’s knife.

Then, make the sandwiches: Move the oven racks in upper and lower thirds of oven and preheat oven to 375F. With a bit of butter, draw an X from corner to corner of two cookie sheets (use sheets about 3/4 inch deep, also called jelly roll pans). Line the bottom of each pan with parchment paper, leaving a 1-inch overhang on each side, pressing to help parchment adhere to the X.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl. Beat together butter and brown sugar in another bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition, then beat in vanilla. Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture in two batches, mixing until just combined.

Divide batter between baking pans - about 1 1/2 cups each - and spread thinly and carefully. (It won’t look like enough batter, but it will be. You don’t need to get it to reach the edges of the pan, just the majority of the pan, and equal area on both pans so that your cookie sides will be even. An offset spatula really helps here. Really.) Sprinkle each pan with an equal amount of praline. Bake, switching positions of pans halfway through, until the layers are golden brown but still tender, about 10 minutes. Cool in pans 10 minutes, then transfer parchment to racks and cool completely, about 30 minutes. Clean one of the baking pans.

Line clean baking pan with fresh parchment. Invert one sandwich layer onto to the sheet, praline side down. Spread ice cream (it helps to dump all the ice cream in a big bowl and mash it up a bit, just to soften it) using the offset spatula (wash it after you use it on the layers). Invert the second layer on top, praline side up, carefully pressing it down. Wrap the top of the sandwich in plastic wrap and slide into freezer for at least one hour, ideally two. Cut into sandwiches with a sharp, large knife just before serving.

The sandwich, wrapped in plastic warp and foil, can be frozen for up to a week.

*Mary K came to the rescue.

I had two inadvertent spurts of patriotism right before this Fourth of July. On July 3, I wore red, white and blue - white skirt, periwinkle shirt, red straw bag. And the week before, I made a red, white and blue dessert, a gem-colored, old-fashioned and elegant summertime bread pudding, a mannerly gentlelady dressed in her simple, warm-weather linen frock.

This dessert takes all of 20 minutes to put together. Most of that time is spent keeping half an eye on simmering, fragrant pot of berries, the pure, sun-filled smell of heat and light and July. The real trick is to plan it in advance. To transform, this pudding really needs at least eight hours in the fridge. With patience, and a silky, sexy shawl of creme anglaise, the country lady becomes downright dressed for the dance, a chilly, slippery end to a midsummer night’s turn at a driftwood-colored picnic table, or a sticky evening on the front porch, the wind picking up and an angry thunderhead piling up on the horizon.

Perhaps I’m more of a patriot than I’d care to admit. But when our country’s birthday means *a day at the lake, a long, languorous afternoon of margaritas and card games and brownies and rocking chairs, grilled flank steak rubbed with cumin and coriander and cayenne, reading James Beard in the hammock and jumping off the end of a dock in a canary yellow two piece, capped by a nighttime boat ride, to a slideshow of two or three or four simultaneous fireworks shows, well, then I can buy into a national holiday. Happy Fourth, friends!

Summer Bread Pudding with Blueberries and Raspberries, adapted from Gourmet July 2007

Serves 6

1 loaf unsliced good brioche, crusts discarded
4 cups blueberries
5 cups raspberries
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

Bring berries, juice and sugar to a boil in a medium saucepan over medium heat, then simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes.

While the berries are simmering, cut bread into 14 1/2-inch slices. Cut out a 3-inch round from one slice and put in bottom of a deep, 2 1/2-quart bowl, about 8 inches in diameter across top and 3 inches across the bottom. Line sides of bowl with 10 slices, or as many that will fit, overlapping them slightly.

Spoon fruit into a sieve set over a bowl and let drain for 15 minutes. Spoon fruit into bread-lined bowl. Pour about half of the juice down the sides of the bowl, onto and into the bread slices. Cover fruit with more slices of bread, covering to fit, then pour the rest of the juice over the bread so that all of the slices are completely saturated. Cover the pudding with wax paper and place a 7-inch plate, upside down, on top of paper. Put a 1- to 1 1/2-pound weight (a large can of whole tomatoes worked for me) on plate. Slide into refrigerator and chill at least 8 hours.

Remove weight, plate, and wax paper. Put a platter on top of the bowl and invert it, carefully unmolding the pudding. Slice and serve with ice cream or creme anglaise.

Vanilla Creme Anglaise, adapted from The Gourmet Cookbook

1/2 vanilla bean
2 cups half and half
2 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar

Split the vanilla bean open with the tip of a paring knife. Scrape the seeds into a 3-quart saucepan, then add pod. Add half-and-half and bring to a boil. Remove from heat.

Whisk together eggs and sugar in a medium bowl until combined. Add hot half and half mixture in a slow stream, whisking constantly, then return to saucepan and cook over moderately low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until custard is thickened and registers 175 F on a thermometer; do not let boil.

Pour custard sauce throw a fine-mesh sieve into a metal bowl; discard solids. Set bowl in a larger bowl of ice and cold water and stir sauce until cool. Refrigerate, covered, until cold, at least one hour.

* for which I must thank the lovely Stephanie, and her ambitious hostessing parents, and the lovely ancestral lake house furnished with a glider on the porch and in the kitchen, the piece de resistance, an avocado green oven.