A few weeks ago, as I blissfully polished off my cone of Mount Desert Island Sweet and Salty Peanut Butter ice cream, I found myself saying out loud, “Peanut butter makes me proud to be an American.” With July 4 just a few days away, I got to thinking about which other foods have the same effect.

Figuring out which foods are true Americans can be as tricky as figuring out which folks are true Americans. We say “as American as apple pie,” but there are plenty of European antecedents, going back to medieval times, for apple pye. Ditto with hot dogs (aka frankfurters). So I am going to sidestep that debate, ignore the complexities of food history and merely give you a short, personal and admittedly quirky list of foods – some of them processed, some not – that make me happy I was born in the U.S.A.

PEANUT BUTTER

I was a picky eater until I was about 11. I snubbed lobster on every childhood trip to Maine. Eggs any way any how were OUT OF THE QUESTION. Etc. Etc. But in that fussy period, I consumed god knows how many peanut butter-and-banana sandwiches. Which I still love. Thank you, Elvis. Since then, peanut butter ice cream, peanut noodles, peanut butter and jelly layer cake, peanut butter smoothies. And of course peanut butter cookies. And thank you, thank you, Mr. George Washington Carver.

CORNBREAD

I did not grow up with cornbread, but I put it on my table as soon as I could. Cornbread with creamed corn and jalapeños stirred into the batter is a treat. A chunk of cornbread with butter and honey makes me supremely happy. I own two, yes two, cast iron pans for making corn sticks, which produce the ideal ratio of cornbread crumb to cornbread crust. Around Thanksgiving, I like to make a cranberry cornbread, which is a cheerful red and yellow, and very tasty to boot. Which brings me to cranberries.

CRANBERRIES

First of all, they are beautiful and they make anything they share the plate with that much prettier. Next, they add a jolt of sour brightness to the usually too-sweet Thanksgiving table. After our family renounced the canned jellied stuff sometime in the early 1980s, homemade cranberry sauce and cranberry relish were beautiful revelations. Like fresh salmon cutlets as opposed to canned salmon cutlets at roughly the same time, fresh cranberry sauce changed my view of food. Then there is Dorie Greenspan’s Cranberry-Lime Galette (“Baking From My Home to Yours”). Enough said.

MAPLE SYRUP

Last but most definitely not least. My mother is Canadian, so maple syrup and I are old friends. These days, maple syrup often sweetens my mornings: I put it in both my coffee and my granola. In place of corn syrup, it makes a pecan pie that’s actually worth eating. I have been known to bring a small jar of real maple syrup to a diner in New York City. The operator of the diner was not pleased. But the customers at the neighboring table asked if they could have some. As an adult, every single time I pour warm maple syrup (preferably a nice, robust grade B) onto a stack of pancakes (preferably whole-grain), I thank my lucky stars and stripes that I’m eating American.