Fourth of July BBQ Stuff

Yesterday I made a couple things for a 4th of July BBQ with friends:

1. Syrian beef kebabs from this NYT article. Pine nuts in kebabs are good. These were served on flat bread with a simple romaine, cucumber, onion salad.
   
2. A lime pie with mango topping from Big Flavors. This pie tasted good, but was a complete mess. The filling (a lime custard) never really set up, so the "pie" was more like "sauce in a graham cracker crust". This should be a lesson to me, but there are so many things I could learn from the experience that I'll just walk away with: "this is why I don't normally do fancy desserts". I'm sure that lesson will suffer the same fate as the "don't deep fry in the house without proper equipment" thing. :-)
3. More watermelon-raspberry-ginger punch.
4. I also made a loaf of bread for us. First bread in the new oven, we'll see how it turned out today.