A classic tomato salad with sweet onion and cucumber and a nicely balanced vinegar based dressing.

Cucumber Tomato and Onion Salad

I love cucumber, tomato and onion salad combinations and I eat them constantly over these hot summers, so I am always playing around with them.

It's pretty amazing how subtle changes in the same basic ingredients can completely alter the texture and taste in them and the dressing on this one is a great balance between tart and sweet to me.

Highly seasoned grilled shrimp served on grilled fresh corn tortillas with salsa fresca, onion, cilantro and fresh lime.

Tex-Mex Grilled Shrimp Tacos

I love any kind of Mexican or Tex-Mex food, though outside of the usual standards of tacos, burritos and quesadillas - we pretty much go out more often than making it at home. The main reason is I have an adventurous palate and almost never order the same thing.

The Cajun, well he's the total opposite and almost never steers away from the crunchy beef tacos. It's kinda funny really, because he'll study the menu for awhile, but then when the server arrives, it's always crunchy tacos!

This sheet pan mix of roasted potatoes with loads of vegetables and smoked sausage is an easy meal that's packed with flavor.

Roasted Potatoes with Sausage and Vegetables

You may remember a near viral recipe for a simple sheet pan roasted potatoes with onions and sweet peppers flashing across social media platforms the past year or so.

I'm old enough to remember when people just made these kinds of things with little to no fanfare, but hey, if social media can drum up some interest in cooking, well, anything... I'm happy about it!

Food, after all, isn't just about nourishment, although some would have you think so.

Ribeye steak, lightly marinated, then air-fried, combined with a mix of air-fried sweet peppers and onions and served over rice.

Air-Fryer Marinated Ribeye Steak and Peppers

Okay. I'm not gonna lie. When I first thought to do a ribeye steak, my favorite cut of steak, in an air fryer, boy was I leery about it.

I mean a good ribeye steak, besides being my favorite, is not cheap, and I was so fearful of ruining it! When I cook steaks, they are grilled most of the time, whether it's outside or inside on a countertop grill. (I love my Ninja Foodie grill and use it multiple times a week!)

A salad of cucumber and sweet onion, dressed with a creamy, sour cream, mayo and buttermilk herb dressing. Add a little purple onion for color.

Cucumber Salad with Creamy Buttermilk Herb Dressing

Well, here it is September, and the last weekend before fall, and as happens every, single, year with the blogging community, you're probably seeing all sorts of apple and pumpkin posts as those of us who write about and share recipes on this internet world get anxious to switch over to the aromas of fall.

Unfortunately for many of us here in the South, most especially the Deep South, it doesn't matter what the calendar says, the weather betrays it! Although we got a slight break this weekend, it's still hotter than hot in my part of the world and I'm not ready for that pumpkin spice latte y'all. So... I'll still be plugging along with those cooling summer foods, like cucumber salads, for a bit yet.

A sausage and peppers dish, using spicy Cajun sausage, pan seared cabbage wedges, sweet onion and diced tomatoes with green chilies, served over rice.

Cajun Sausage and Peppers with Cabbage

This is just a little different take on the old Italian sausage and peppers dish, adding a mix of colorful peppers, spicy Cajun sausage and pan-seared cabbage wedges.

Instead of a sauce that's typically used with sausage and peppers, I'm using diced tomatoes with green chilies in order to allow the individual elements all shine on their own and not be buried in sauce. For the sausage, I'm using smoked instead of a raw, encased sausage.

Summer Vegetable Gumbo - Garden in a Pot. A mix of summer's best veggies like sweet onion, fresh corn, zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes, green beans, sweet bell pepper and okra, a perfect dish for the veggie lovers!

Summer Vegetable Gumbo - Garden in a Pot

Let's have a last hurrah for summer y'all! We are finally at the end of it this Friday, well, at least according to the calendar. There won't be any fall-like temperatures showing up here in the Deep South for awhile yet even then. In fact, the past two days there has been a heat index advisory of 110 degrees. Hey, the good news is this dish can be served hot, warm or at room temperature!

I love vegetables, and this stew is loaded with the summer vegetables I love.

Other than just a general vegetable stew, I actually wasn't quite sure what I wanted to call this recipe when it was all said and done, but when I opened the stored container to heat up a serving the next day, and the aroma immediately spoke gumbo to me, so that's what I settled on. 

Southern Style Skillet Ratatouille - a simple stew of diced vegetables, made with bacon drippings, the Trinity of Southern Cooking, zucchini and summer squash, tomato, eggplant, okra and fresh herbs.

Southern Style Skillet Ratatouille

Most folks these days seem to associate ratatouille with the Disney movie of the same name, and many may only know it from that. It actually is a real Mediterranean dish, most closely associated with France and said to have originated in Nice. The word perhaps comes from "touiller" and translates to mean something akin to "toss or stir."

Traditionally ratatouille is simply zucchini and tomatoes, with peppers, garlic and onion, sometimes sliced, sometimes cut into chunks. Somewhere along the way, eggplant was included, and though it wasn't always a part of the traditional dish, it's pretty much expected these days. I decided to make it with a dice of a variety of summer vegetables that we love in the south.

A vegetable skillet meal, made from fresh summer squash, sweet Vidalia onion, with fresh okra and tomato.

Summer Veggie Skillet - Squash and Okra with Onion and Tomato

This is one of my favorite summertime skillet vegetable dishes - just simply squash and sweet onions, sauteed in a little bit of bacon drippings and butter, and stewed down with sliced okra, fresh tomatoes and finished with some garden parsley and basil. Quick and easy to make, I can make a meal of this entire pan on these hot summer days!

Oven roasting intensifies the flavor of many vegetables, giving a browned and often crisped exterior, against a creamy, soft feel inside. It's one of my favorite ways to cook them, and they're a perfect addition to your table any time of the year.

Roasted Zucchini, Onions, Peppers and Tomatoes

It's mid-October and that means that we just finished up with "America's Largest Block Party" down here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. If you have a classic car, or even if you just love them, but you've never been, I don't know why! Put it on your calendar and get on down here next year and check it out. It's quite an event, there are beautiful cars everywhere, and it always starts the first weekend in October every year, continuing on through the next Sunday.

The weather has been perfect for it too, as it usually is for this event. By October, things have usually cooled off a tad here in the Deep South finally - mid-80s during the day and low to mid-60s at night. There was one night there on the ball field with No. 1 Grandson that I was literally shivering in a t-shirt and jeans! Humidity has not been too bad either and frankly that's really the biggest factor around here because even when the temperature is up, if the humidity is down it's pleasant, and that it has been. Really gorgeous weather.

 

Thick cut slices of cucumber, with sweet onion and fresh tomatoes, mixed with a mayonnaise, sour cream and fresh herb dressing for a creamy cucumber salad.

Creamy Cucumber and Tomato Salad

When the weather is warm around here, there are two things you will almost always find in my fridge - watermelon and some kind of cucumber salad - and that hasn't slowed down.

There's a dysfunction in my hypothalamus (which I'm sure is way more than you probably ever wanted to know about me), so I get overheated super easy in the summer, and those are two cooling foods that I know will help to keep my body thermostat in check.

So... in the midst of these summer-like temps, and before soup, stew, chili and gumbo weather arrives in the fall, I'm gonna slide in another one of my favorite cucumber salads that I've been munching on for the past few weeks.

A skillet meal made from the best of summer veggies - squash, zucchini, bell pepper, green beans, Vidalia onions and tomatoes, with red potatoes and fresh garden herbs and the addition of some pan-seared fresh wild-caught Gulf shrimp.

Garden Vegetable Skillet with Shrimp

I get strange cravings, and most times, they're not at all what you'd expect in the way of a craving.

I get very strong cravings out of the blue for beef. For McDonald's french fries. Or their iced coffee. Homemade chicken noodle soup and creamy Chicken and Noodles. Egg drop soup from the local Chinese restaurant. And vegetables, in general. It was that way in my pregnancy - I didn't crave sweets, or odd combinations. I craved a meat and three dinner!

A cucumber and sweet Vidalia onion salad, dressed with a sweet and sour vinegar dressing.

Cucumber and Onion Salad

I shared the sour cream and onion cucumber salad and had so many requests for the plain vinegar variation, that I figured instead of pointing everybody to the variation at the bottom of the recipe, that I would plant it here right beside that version, to include it among all of the other summertime cucumber salads I enjoy.

A cucumber and sweet Vidalia onion salad, dressed with a vinegar and sour cream dill dressing.

Sour Cream Cucumber and Onion Salad

The cucumber consumption has begun!! I think that I have been through at least a dozen cucumbers in the past week, because when it starts getting hot here, and believe me, that comes fast in the Deep South, I eat a lot of cucumber salads.

Cucumbers are something like 95% water and they really do have a cooling effect on the body, so the phrase "cool as a cucumber" truly does have some meaning to it. They are surprisingly full of antioxidant vitamins also, help to rid the body of toxins and have many other health benefits.

A hot dip made with pepper jack cheese, mayonnaise and sweet Vidalia onions, topped with more cheese, buttery Ritz cracker crumbs and garnished with bacon.

Cheesy Warm Vidalia Onion Dip

You've probably noticed that Vidalia onions are a little smaller now than they were earlier in the season, an indication that the season is winding down and will soon be over until next spring.

Refrigerator Pickled Vegetables (Giardiniera)

Refrigerator Pickled Vegetables (Giardiniera)

Giardiniera

I decided to make up a batch of pickled veggies over the Memorial Day weekend. Pickled vegetables, or Giardiniera (meaning "the garden") is probably familiar to you from the grocery store shelf, but it's a super easy pickled condiment to make at home too.

 

Strips of onion, pickled in vinegar, sugar, hot sauce and pickling spices, an excellent addition to sandwiches, burgers, beans and greens.

Pickled Onions

I had several requests for the recipe I use for the pickled onions pictured with my turnip greens, so I promised to squeeze it in here over the weekend, between all the holiday posts for turkey and dressing and all those side dish goodies we're all looking forward to here in a few days.

The British have their pickled pearl onions, often served as an appetizer at local pubs, but the South, well, we have our own version of pickled onions. You'll most often find ours served family-style at catfish houses, right alongside the all-you-can-eat fried catfish, turnip greens, coleslaw, fried okra, and cornbread.

Garden Fresh Salsa, made with juicy tomatoes, sweet Vidalia onions, crisp sweet garden bell peppers, spicy fresh jalapeno, sweet corn on the cob and fragrant garden cilantro.

Garden Fresh Salsa

Here it is running up on mid-August already and I realize that I've got quite a few summer posts like this one to catch up on! So don't go fussin' at me for posting a series of non-traditional recipes that may not necessarily fit into the "Southern" recipe box. Besides our southern favorites and classic southern recipes, like everybody else, we also enjoy a wide variety of other foods too, like this.

Sweet Vidalia onions, stuffed with garlic and butter and drizzled with balsamic vinegar, wrapped in bacon and placed in individual packets to be cooked on the grill or oven.

Baked Vidalia Onions

If you're a lover of Vidalia onions like I am, isn't that just a thing of beauty? I mean really! How I love these sweet Vidalia onions in the summer, and I cry, quite literally, when they are gone until the next season rolls around and I have to use those stronger yellow onions. Sometimes I have to step outside just to clear my eyes, but that never happens with my sweet Vidalias.

O'Brien Style Cast Iron Skillet Fried Potatoes

Red skin potatoes are fried up in a cast iron skillet with sweet Vidalia onion and bell pepper and nicely seasoned for a take on Potatoes O'Brien. Great for any meal - add bacon, ham, sausage, fresh herbs and mushrooms if you like!

Potatoes O'Brien - Skillet Fried Potatoes

Skillet fried potatoes, also known as home fries and cottage fries in the north, are such an easy side dish, that goes well with breakfast, but also as a dinner side dish. For my classic skillet potatoes I use peeled russets, some onion and that's about it other than the delicious fat used to cook them in - for me, I love using bacon drippings for the extra richness it provides - and the very specific method.

For this version of skillet potato, I prefer to use the smaller, unpeeled red-skinned or new potatoes. The skin is tender, and to me tasty, and they cook up nicely without the steaming process that is necessary for our beloved fried taters and onion. If you prefer to use a russet, rather than a red skinned potato, you certainly can, though I'd click over to that other recipe, because I think that method works best with russets.