A summertime Southern favorite, fresh speckled butter beans are stewed down with a ham hock enhanced broth.

Southern Style Speckled Butter Beans

Somewhere in the dark recesses of my deep freeze, I have some ham hocks. But... The Cajun handled the transportation of our freezer from the old house to the new, along with the contents of it, all scattered about in massive coolers, and frankly, I just crammed it all back in there with no manner of organization once it arrived.

Needless to say, I now can't find a thing.

Chicken thighs, simply seasoned and slow cooked in the crockpot with a mixture of pineapple juice, brown sugar and soy sauce, that is thickened and brushed on as a finishing glaze.

Slow Cooker Brown Sugar Chicken

It's become pretty clear that folks love the combination of savory meats with sweet brown sugar. I've used it to candy bacon, love it for ham, for rubs on ribs and steaks, it's amazing with chicken and I've even used it for fish. Here lately, I've been seeing brown sugar everywhere in these 2, 3 and 4 ingredient dishes you see pass via Facebook and Pinterest.

Fresh fish, trout pictured here, seasoned simply with salt, pepper, Cajun seasoning and Old Bay, drizzled with butter and dusted with lemon zest, baked and garnished with sliced green onion and fresh parsley. Works well with many fish. Served here with Southern style green beans and parslied potatoes.

Baked Fish

You'll notice that despite being a Mississippi Gulf Coast gal, you don't see a lot of recipes on here for fish. It's not because we don't eat it - we do! Every chance we get. While Mondays are always red beans and rice here in the Deep South, Fridays mean fish, or at least seafood of some kind, thanks to our heavy Catholic population and abundant access to it.

Heck, I'm not even above cleaning them, and the basic rule is that if you catch them, you clean them, and well... it's not a pretty job, though the end result is, of course, fabulous. If you're too skittish for all that, the local fishmongers will sell them to you already cleaned and filleted.

Whole okra, steamed, salted and dipped in butter.

Steamed Okra

Some of you who don't care for okra will not be interested in this recipe at all, but I can tell you that people who love okra, pretty much love it anyway you fix it and I happen to be one of them.

We use it regularly in gumbo here in the Deep South and even folks who aren't real fond of it, consume it that way without blinking an eye.

Southern Field Peas and Snaps - Field peas cooked with green beans and served here with grilled smoked andouille sausage and cornbread.

Southern Field Peas and Snaps

It can be a little bit confusing when a Southerner talks about field peas, because kinda like with butter beans or what we mean when we say "Coke," they might be referring to any one of literally hundreds of Southern field peas.

Field peas, or cowpeas as we also know them, aren't really peas at all. They are beans that grow very well in the South because they are heat and drought tolerant and grow in just about any soil. They're categorized generally in four groups - crowder, cream, black-eyed and field peas, and there are many varieties to be found in each of those categories.

South Your Mouth Cookbook Review

Mandy Rivers' debut cookbook, South Your Mouth, Tried & True Southern Recipes

Update! Congratulations to Katherine Kelley who said:

Thank you for your great recipes! You've helped transform this former Yankee now loving life in Mississippi into a respectable Southern cook, and provided loads of laughter as well. My southern-born & bred & fed husband sure is happy!

Katherine, please contact me by Monday, July 14, 2014 at mary@deepsouthdish.com with your full name and mailing address so we can get your cookbook to you!

I started my own food blogging adventure in 2008. Even writing that seems so odd to me that I've actually been doing this that long already!

In the beginning there weren't that many of us blogging about food specifically, and most especially about Southern food. Facebook was new, Pinterest and Instagram didn't exist, but all that's certainly changed over the past six years, and I've met many different bloggers along the way through all of those mediums. Some became friends, others came and went, posting for a little while and then fading away, and others, well, you just seemed to connect to right away.

Grilled "Hot Tub" Beer Brats - Bratwurst sausage, braised on the grill in a hot tub of beer, onions and butter, then seared and returned to the tub. Serve on hard rolls, with mustard, onions and pickles.

Grilled "Hot Tub" Beer Brats

Now, yes, right off the bat before some of y'all insist on thinking I don't know, bratwurst ain't exactly a Deep South dish. I do realize that! Once upon a time, you would have been hard-pressed to even find a bratwurst sausage anywhere in The South to save your life. But now that they are everywhere, we Southerners sure do enjoy our share of them.

The first bratwurst I ever ate was in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. I fell in love with them and let me tell you the best ones surely have to be up there in that part of the country. So different from the typical Italian sausage we are used to, I was thrilled when one day Johnsonville brand bratwurst started showing up in the markets here years ago.