Summer

"This was served at our wedding last year and always delights a crowd, hence the name. Not that we have anything against Billy Idol…. It is fruity, sweet, on the lighter side and can be made more like a cooler if you increase the juice.  Frozen fruit is key here as it keeps the drink cold and stops from becoming too mushy in the liquid. Frozen pre-cut fruit works fine or you can do it yourself."

1 bottle of white wine, something fruity like Chenin Blanc works well
1 cup frozen diced peaches
1 cup frozen diced mango
1 red delicious apple, cored and cubed
1 lemon, thinly sliced and seeds removed
8-12 ounces fruit nectar (anything like peach or passionfruit or guava works)

Mix the wine and nectar in a large container, add apples and refrigerate for at least one hour. When you’re ready to serve add the frozen fruit, give it a stir and serve over ice. Garnish each glass with a slice of lemon.

-- Recipe courtesy of MattBites.com    

Some things are just too good to pass up, such as the combo of blueberries and brown sugar.

And what else would be better than to combine them into a poundcake?

I adore poundcake. Love it more so. I’ve been kicking it up a notch lately with buttermilk, which I pretty much substitute for milk in most of my baking now. It gives a lift and kick and a richness to cakes especially. Honestly, because cakes NEED a bit more richness… enter gilding the lily terminology here.

Add in blueberries and your summer has just been captured in this dessert. Garnish with whipped cream, serve warm with ice cream and of course a few fresh blueberries, or toasted the next morning as the breakfast of champions!

From the blueberry fields flooding into to Middle Georgia into this Farmer’s kitchen and now on to yours, enjoy this delightful dessert!

Whether you are married or buried in The South, you will have chicken salad. You may be a newly born baby down in Dixieland, and your first meal will most likely be a Dixieland Delight of chicken salad – second to pimento cheese or barbeque. I say all this in jest – “jest” saying, y’all, we eat a lot of chicken salad!

This Southern staple is apropos for a wedding, a shower, a luncheon, a wake, a church supper or a hunt club picnic. It is a mandatory dish at garden club. You can be quite elegant with your presentation, and remove the crust (Mimi always said that if you cut the crust off, it was fancy), or you may scoop it onto a lettuce leaf. Or, you may dip Ritz crackers into the styrofoam cup of chicken salad as you leave the drive-thru window at Georgia Bobs – chicken salad can be casual, everyday or highbrow, high-end… diner’s choice.

Chipped, chopped, shredded or chunky – chicken salad is much the same as Southern barbeque in its array of forms. “Mother always chipped hers so fine that it was almost fluffy…” I’ve heard many a time. “Uncle Earl just chopped his…” you may have witnessed this. MawMaw, Mema, Mimi and Mama all have their methods and, like brands of mayonnaise, their posterity follow suit in their taste and preference. Then there is the entire debate about celery. As for me and my house, the finer chopped the better – if added at all.

Just on the edge of the vegetable garden my Hungarian grandparents had on their Indiana farm was a cherry tree. The sprawling branches thick with leaves provided a welcome canopy on hot, sunny days — and a perfect climbing structure for fun-loving children.

I do remember climbing very carefully into the tree, not too high, but just far enough off the ground to be able to reach for ripe cherries that I would pop into my mouth, spitting the hard-as-stone pits onto the earth below. And, thus began my insatiable desire for sweet, rosy cherries.

Several years ago, I brought a handful of Rainier cherries home from the grocery store. I couldn’t resist their characteristic rosy blush with a warm, sunny undertone. I ate one. I was hooked. It was the sweetest, most delicious cherry I had ever eaten. The creamy colored flesh was juicy and much more flavorful than the traditional bing cherries I was used to eating. The Washington Rainier was cherry perfection.