Fresh peaches, tossed in lemon juice and skillet cooked in a buttery, brown sugar sauce with cinnamon, vanilla and a bit of whisky or bourbon, if you like. Shown here with my Grandma Mac's Perfect Pound Cake.

Skillet Peaches

Southern peach season - typically mid-May through mid-August - is in full force... and I have barely eaten any fresh peaches!

I don't cook with them much, mostly preferring to take them as a fruit snack really, and the past few years, I've been ordering peaches from around the south that we don't get here.

Somehow, I missed it this year, and last year even. Although you can still find some peaches around town, mostly from California. No doubt they're fine peaches too, but you can't match a local peach, and by local I mean the south in general - Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina, of course.

A quick beef and rice skillet with a little Southwestern flair from sweet and hot peppers, chili powder, cumin and paprika, diced tomatoes with green chilies and Mexican blend cheeses. Eat as is, or roll up in flour or corn tortillas and top with a dollop of salsa, guacamole and sour cream.

Southwestern Beef Skillet

I love a good skillet meal! They're easy and certainly quick and because of that they don't heat up the kitchen too much, an important bonus in these triple digit summers we're having in the south.

I actually cut this recipe off of a package of Kraft shredded cheese sometime back and finally got around to giving it a try. I found it to be a bit bland sounding though, and it also appeared to be lacking in some of the typical flavor elements you might find in a dish labeled as "southwestern," so I used it as a base, and made some changes by adding more veggies, spices and seasonings.

A tomato and cucumber salad, dressed lightly with a seasoned, mayonnaise-based dressing and lots of crumbled bacon!

Bacon, Cucumber and Tomato Salad

I didn't have nearly as many tomatoes or cucumbers this year. Early on, in the spring, they did great, but then by June we had constant, heavy rainstorms - which, by the way haven't stopped - intertwined with heat indexes in the triple digits - that haven't stopped either - and the tomatoes really suffered. Guess I'm either going to have to start from seed so I can plant earlier, or else just forget about it and hit the fresh market weekly for my tomato fix!

My early tomatoes - Deep South Dish on Instagram

An easy, re-purposed pasta dish made from leftover pasta, pasta sauce, meats, like pepperoni, smoked sausage or other leftover meats and cheese. Fast and delicious!

Fried Pasta

While you can certainly make fried pasta intentionally using freshly boiled pasta, sauteed meats and jarred pasta sauce, it's really a dish born out of leftovers and wow is it a delicious repurpose!

Although, I've written it out here for you with measurements - which results in about 4 cups pasta, or what I say is two healthy adult sized portions - essentially there's no recipe. Just a good olive oil, butter, leftover pasta and leftover sauce is really all there is to it. Throw in some leftover cooked or smoked sausage, meatballs, pepperoni, shredded beef, whatever you've got.

Pasta Salad Collection

A collection of pasta salads from Deep South Dish blog.

I love pasta salads, anytime of the year really, but most especially in the hot summer months. You'll almost always find one in my fridge, and my Tuna Macaroni Salad is a summertime favorite.

Some form of pasta, often with a protein, dressed with a vinaigrette or creamy dressing, and you've got a great meal, that's not too heavy for those super hot days when your energy is already sapped.

A dense, lightly sweetened cake, perfect for sugar-sweetened, syrupy strawberries and whipped cream.

Classic Strawberry Shortcake Cake

Strawberry shortcake. It's a very simple dish really, but so good! Freshly sliced strawberries left to soak in a little sugar until a syrupy glaze forms, then spooned over a sweetened, biscuit-like dense cake, with those gorgeous sweet juices drizzled on top and finished with a dollop of whipped cream. Now, that's an easy and delicious dessert.

Truly, you can use any good biscuit recipe and sweeten it with a bit of sugar for a decent strawberry shortcake. I certainly have. Cream biscuits are especially good, however, a more classic shortcake, which back in the day, often appeared in the form of a single layer cake, is something that will hold up to those juices!