Norma Jean Darden and Carole Darden’s sisters have written a family food memoir.   Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine is a short biography of their father, Bud Darden, Walter T. Darden, MD, with a picnic menu attached. The sisters’ family picnic memories at their home in Newark, New Jersey.

The Dardans include some tips for a picnic, especially the Fourth of July feast of roast suckling pig, fried chicken, barbecued spareribs, charcoal-broiled flank or Shell Steak, corn on the cob, greens (collard or mixed), string beans, potato salad or macaroni and shrimp salad, jubilee salad, deviled eggs, garlic French bread, ice-cold watermelon, strawberry wine punch, assorted sodas, and cold beer.

See Norma Jean Darden and Carole Darden. “Fourth of July Picnic, Weekend Concoctions, and Old Time Favorites, Told by “Bud” –Walter J. Darden.”  In Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine: Recipes and Reminiscences of a Family. New York: Doubleday, 1978, rpt. 1994.