After more than a year of pandemic blues, area shoppers were ready to celebrate the red, white, and blue with in-person family gatherings once again.

With the gatherings comes food, and shoppers certainly came out to get their cookout ingredients.

Dartmouth Week camped out next to a packed Shaw’s parking lot on a rainy Saturday afternoon to ask shoppers about what they planned to contribute toward their family’s Independence Day grub.

Boston resident Jessica Aguilera-Steinert said she was going to attempt a couple of salads for her family gathering in South Dartmouth. One was a spinach salad, while the other was an orzo salad recipe she read about in the New York Times.

“This will be my first time making that,” she said. “I get a cooking thing once a week and it was there.”

Other shoppers, like New Bedford resident Marie Crompton, liked to keep the food simple, yet tasty. 

For her holiday contribution, Crompton said she planned to boil some corn and add a little milk to it.

“It sweetens it up,” she said. “Tastes good.”

The New Bedford resident planned to attend a family gathering in Rochester with her 102-year-old mother.

“She’ll have a little bit of everything,” Crompton laughed.

Fellow New Bedford resident Maddie Lupbke also planned to keep things simple.

“Hotdogs, burgers, corn on the cob, brownies, chips and soda,” she said.

The burger meat, she said, is usually purchased at Giammalvo's in New Bedford and is seasoned with salt, pepper, and a small amount of garlic powder.

“Gotta go with the basics,” Lupbke said.

Vermonter Patricia Gomez also planned to have some classic burgers and hotdogs while with her family in Little Compton.

For her burgers, she likes to add bacon, cheese, barbecue sauce, and a “little bit of chopped onion.” All the meat, she said, is done outdoors on the grill.

“Hopefully not in the rain,” Gomez laughed. But with inclement weather in the forecast, the family had an alternative. They “will take a couple cars out of the garage and try to do it there.”