A few basic ingredients: cherry pie filling, crushed pineapple, sweetened condensed milk and Cool Whip make up the base for this old school frozen delight! From there, make it your own with easy add-ins.

Frozen Cherry Fruit Salad

I live on the Gulf Coast, and down here, the humidity is as important as the temperature. Maybe even more so! We've been under 100+ degree heat advisories here for awhile now because of that heat index. In June. Already. I pray we don't see a hurricane this year, well, ever again in my lifetime really, that knocks out power for long. Gotta have that air conditioning down here!

When the weather heats up like this, cooling foods are a steady in my house. Watermelon, cucumbers, grapes, cantaloupe, strawberries are consumed regularly around here! Of course, although they may mostly be relegated to those family gatherings more so these days, we have our icebox and freezer desserts too. This cherry salad is one of those that has been around for years.

 

I took two great Southern classics, Frozen Strawberry Dessert and Strawberry Pretzel Salad, and combined elements of both to make this Frozen Strawberry Pretzel Salad, made with cream cheese, frozen strawberries, banana, pineapple and whipped topping on a salty, pretzel crust.

Frozen Strawberry Pretzel Salad

I know its officially fall on the calendar finally, and some of y'all in those areas of The South farther north from here are seeing cooler temperatures and thinking about soups and stews and pumpkin and apple and oatmeal recipes. Down in The Deep South, and most especially the coastal Deep South, summer is still roaring along. I'll sure be glad when I can give my A/C a little break, but for now it's blasting away, trying to keep things cool around here.