A classic, open-faced tuna melt sandwich of tuna, celery, sweet onion and tarragon and dressed with mayonnaise, gets a spicy kick from Cajun seasoning, hot sauce and jalapeno and is served on a toasted English muffin, topped with fresh, sliced tomato and melted cheese.

Spicy Tuna Melt

Okay, so yes. It's a simple open-faced tuna melt sandwich. But a reader recently asked me for my recipe, which of course gave me a craving for one, so I made them and I'm sharing it with y'all, because that is what a blogger of food does. Besides. It's too darned hot to cook much, or at least often, and when is the last time you had one yourself? I think it's time!

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Southern Slaw Dogs with Slawsa

Slawsa Original - the gourmet topping... for everything! Perfect for those southern slaw dogs y'all!

I recently had the chance to give a condiment product called Slawsa Original a try & let me tell y'all, it is really some kind of good! If you enjoy a good ole southern slaw dog, I think you will really LOVE your hotdogs with Slawsa.

It's kinda hard to describe really, because while it's a little like Chow Chow, it's also not like Chow Chow at all, though I think it'd be perfect for beans too. A crunchy cabbage based condiment, also containing mustard, green bell pepper, onion and carrots, it's essentially a cross somewhere between a vinegar coleslaw and salsa, and it has a nice healthy kick to it too. Great for hot dogs and hamburgers, I could easily see serving it as a condiment for grilled meats, fish and chicken as well.

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Apple Julep, a refreshing drink made with apple juice, pineapple, orange and lemon juice, is bumped up to a sangria with the addition of white wine and rum for a refreshing adult drink.

Apple Julep Sangria

If you've ever been to the Applewood Farmhouse Restaurant in the Sevierville/Pigeon Forge area of Tennessee, chances are you've had their signature Applewood Julep. The restaurant, a renovated farmhouse, serves good ole country cooking and is so homey that it even has a great sittin' porch - if you're so inclined. It's been awhile since I was up that way, but isn't that area of the country just beautiful?

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A quick and easy ice cream using chocolate milk, or Yoo-hoo chocolate drink, with sweetened condensed milk, chocolate syrup, and a small tub of Cool Whip. It tastes remarkably similar to those Wendy's Frosty milk shakes we all love.

Chocolate "Frosty" Ice Cream

I'm gonna tell you a secret. Like with iced tea, we Deep South Southerners never really stop eating ice cream. Even north Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama get a little bit of a winter most years, but except for a very few, and very temporary, winter cold flashes - that frankly exit just about as quickly as they showed up - the climate down here along the Gulf Coast is such that all of those frosty treats are pretty much a year round thing.

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A simple and classic fruit salad made with mandarin oranges, pineapple chunks, marshmallows, sweetened coconut, maraschino cherries and dressed with sour cream.

Mandarin Orange Fruit Salad

This fruit salad has been around a very long time and is another one of those recipes that falls back to my old Bell's Best cookbooks. Those books and that trusty red Betty Crocker binder is literally where many of us southern gals, and often our mothers, picked up a lot of the familiar recipes you see on your favorite southern sites and food blogs today. They were certainly key cookbooks in my learning experience as a young bride in the 70s.

It's very similar to the Old Fashioned 5 Cup Salad, and, in fact, if you're a fan of the movie The Help, set in the early 1960s, this is the very salad that Sissy Spacek, aka Mrs. Walters, ate while she watched The Guiding Light during the bridge parties - though in the movie she calls this recipe ambrosia, as do some of you.

So funny the part where Skeeter walks through the room, and with her bubbly personality and big ole smile says "Hi Mrs. Walters!" who promptly responds by pointing to the television with her fork and saying only "I'm watching my story." Reminds me so much of my Mama and my Nanny Rosalie. You simply did not interrupt them during their "stories," or if you did, the house, or your hair, better be on fire. Seriously!

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Fresh Peach Sweet Iced Tea - Sweet southern iced tea enhanced with a puree of fresh peaches and freshly squeezed lemon juice.

Fresh Peach Sweet Iced Tea

It's gettin' to be southern peach time and we've got the early Georgia peaches already showing up in our markets down here in south Mississippi. The first batch I picked up were nice and ripe and supremely juicy, so I thought it'd be a good time to use some for peach tea.

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Pork and Andouille Sausage Jambalaya

This nicely seasoned jambalaya, a rice-based dish similar to a low country purlow, starts with the classic trinity of vegetables, contains bacon, spicy andouille smoked sausage, and cubes of pork loin, and is baked to a fluffy perfection.

Pork and Andouille Jambalaya

We enjoy jambalaya year round down here along the coast because it's a perfect party dish and take-along for picnics, reunions and those potluck gatherings that still remain popular in the south. Sort of a deep south take on purlow or even a paella, jambalaya is a rice central dish, but from there it can meet with a wide range of ingredients – usually some kind of pork, shrimp or chicken, and often accented with andouille, a spicy smoked Cajun sausage.

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Cherry limeade, made with lemon-lime soda, cherry syrup, a splash of maraschino cherry juice, and fresh squeezed lime juice, is a refreshing and delicious summer drink.

Cherry Limeade

After that nice little cool spell we had, it sure has warmed up here in a hurry on the Coast. And with all that rain, it's left behind a lot of humidity. Already. Perfect weather for one or three of these. The homemade sno-cone syrup I shared recently is what I use to make these, and while I am not even going to try and say that this is a copycat of the beloved Sonic cherry limeade, personally, I like mine better. You can, of course, use any commercial syrup and I've left a few suggestions in the recipe.

Crushed ice is the key!

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Lady cream peas, seasoned with smoked meat, onion, garlic and fresh herbs, served with a side of buttermilk sour cream cornbread and pictured here, with broiled chicken.

Southern Style Lady Cream Peas

Even though white beans and red beans and rice are common weekly features here in the Deep South, I love beans of all kinds, and all I need is a good rainy day like we had yesterday to have an excuse to make some, no matter the temperature outside. Most often served as a side dish to other foods, southern peas are another love of mine, and I absolutely adore Lady Cream Peas for their buttery flavor and super creamy texture.

Known as field peas, cowpeas, and simply southern peas - though calling them peas is a bit of a misnomer, since they are all actually beans - they are identifiable by their small size and by the seed-eye you'll find on them, that tiny little familiar spot most of us immediately recognize from black-eyed peas the most.

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