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Islands in the Stream: The perfect cocktail for Southern Summer Sipping

April 28, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

Y’all know I’m CRAZY about Dolly Parton, right? I mean, she saves wounded bald eagles, gives libraries of books to children, writes and sings incredible songs, is crazy witty, knows and is totally one-thousand percent comfortable with herself, and is just all around glamourous and adorable…Need I say more?

Well, when you’re as big a fan as me, and she announces the dates of her first tour in YEARS, PLUS you accidentally end up with 3 times as many watermelons than you actually need for the event you’re catering (still working on that..erg.) then AND you and your family have eaten so much of it that you’re starting to get waterlogged, you figure our something delicious to do with it. AND, of course, make sure to name it after the queen of east Tennessee herself. (waterMELONS, you know?)

Anyway, I hated to see all this nearly overripe watermelon and juice go to waste, so I combined it with a few other juices, my favorite alcohols, and a little cucumber slices, and Voila! The perfect beach or screened in porch cocktail for warm days or nights…named after one of my favorite Dolly performances with Kenny Rogers, Islands in the Stream.

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Thank You Mama Frittata: Fennel Bulb, Ham, Turnips, and Spring Onions

April 26, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com 6 Comments

My gorgeous mama, holly and my little guy on “Green Day” an imaginary holiday she planned for him.

So my mama and I have this totally crazy, really special, absolutely maddening-mother-daughter-best friend relationship where she takes care of me and thinks of me basically every moment of her life, and when I try to do the same she’s all like “that’s not how you do it.” It drives me totally insane, but deep down, the truth is that I know she’s right like 96% of the time. I don’t know how to do it.

But that’s kind of how it’s supposed to be, right? Mamas make sure we leave for college knowing how to wash laundry, and make beds, and then we get married and they make sure we look our absolute most gorgeous, plus make sure we have hand-calligraphied invitations that they spend hours and hours and hours on (did I mention my mama is an award-winning artist and Martha Stewart Magazine featured calligrapher? no? oh…)

When we have children they dredge up all the tips and tricks and memories of how to care for babies from when we were children, and EVEN if pediatricians have changed their minds like ZILLIONS of times about what is right, or healthy, or appropriate since we were little, our mamas somehow STILL know how to do it better than we do.

Or, at least, my mama does.

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The Juke Joint Cocktail: Walk Me Down

April 21, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

My favorite weekend of the year is Juke Joint Festival weekend…where my bestest buds and I can get our dance on to real, live blues music legends ALL day & night long in venues ranging from a theatre with a canopy of real stars to an old Delta commissary full of memorabilia and farm equipment to famous long-time Juke Joints owned by Delta natives with Blues Music pedigrees.

I also get to gamble with friends on baby pig races (they love oreos and will race around a track to get one… but then again, who wouldn’t?) watch Monkeys riding Dogs herding Sheep (true story) and generally sample all the best food and drink the Delta has to offer.

The winning baby pig at the aforementioned Pig Races

My friend Griffin wins a Blue Ribbon from the Pig Races

For the past eleven years or so, I’ve only missed 3 or four Juke Joint weekends, and only those for VERY important reasons… I mean, I didn’t even miss the year I had a baby that was a month and half old. I pumped in bathroom stalls and sitting out on a picnic table with a scarf wrapped around me when there WERE no stalls, and called home every hour to check on him… Talk about commitment.

Anyway, this year, since we’ve moved farther south we missed it. All weekend I pouted over my Instagram and Facebook feeds as people posted photos of great bands or delicious food. But rather than JUST pout, I decided to pretend like I was there by putting some great Delta Blues on the record player and mixing up a batch of the unofficial Cocktail of Clarksdale Blues travelers and sponsor of the wildest nights in the world, The Walk Me Down. Click below to read more about this delicious (and dangerous cocktail and find out how to make them yourself).

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Freeze State of Jones: Chocolate Mint Ice Cream Sandwiches

April 19, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com 1 Comment

When I was a kid, the ice cream truck (called The Bootsy Wagon) would drive around our neighborhood maybe once a week in the summer, and I would FREAK OUT. I never had money–I mean, I was outside playing in the dirt. What seven year old has money in that situation?– and it would inevitably speed by my house too fast for me to get it to stop, but when I did catch it I’d get a mickey mouse bar or chocolate-vanilla ice cream sandwich and eat it as it dripped down my fingers and chin.

Pure summer kid joy.

Brett would giggle and didn’t believe that the Ice Cream truck company was called the Bootsy Wagon, (He thought my references to it were some folksy, Mississippi way of saying “Ice Cream Truck” like I say “buggy” instead of grocery cart.) Then he read in a corporate donor report that The Bootsy Wagon was a Mississippi Black Owned Business based in Ellisville, Mississippi. Vindicated.

Anyway, since I started making my homemade ice cream six years ago, I’ve been nursing this crazy unlikely dream that one day I’ll own a tiny ice cream truck and be able to bring joy and happiness to children in the summertime.

I don’t know about all that (yet.) but I DO know that I’m having some progress on the portable ice cream sandwich situation… This chocolate-mint ice cream sandwich is WHERE it’s AT. Make them knowing full well you’ll want to eat them all in one sitting.

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Giving Margaritas a Run for their Money: Frozen Grapefruit Palomas

April 14, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

I went to Las Vegas a few months after my son was born for a conference, and at the recommendation of my cousin Virginia, ended up at Mesa Grill for supper with my friend Sara and some of her friends. We ate and ate and ate, and then did a little drinking and only a teeny bit of gambling on the black jack tables. The food was truly deeeelish, and the gambling was fun, but it was the cocktail that Sara had me order that I most remember. It was pink, and fizzy, and just right for the hottest of hot desert night… The Paloma.

I’ve been making and ordering them pretty much constantly since then since it’s made from one of my favorite spirits, tequila (See my ode to the margarita here) and is pretty much PERFECT for summer weather down here in the deepest south. Grapefruit soda, Tequila, lime… could it be any more delicious?

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Lemon-Thyme Custard on Mini Angel Food Cakes

April 12, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

I’m getting the chance to cater for an upcoming ladies’ luncheon this week and I’ve been prepping like cray. We’ve got what feel like gallons of poppyseed dressing and dill vinaigrette in the fridge, I’ve made nearly a year’s worth of mini herbed buttermilk biscuits, the angel food cake is R-E-A-D-Y, and STILL have an awful lot to do. On the plus side, we’ve gotten to taste-test a couple of dessert possibilities, and one really stood out as the hands-down-winner-take-all-winner-winner-chicken-dinner winner. Classic, fluffy Angel Food Cake with lemon-thyme boiled custard.

I know, I know, I know… y’all are thinking I should put myself on custard restriction since this is the like the 3rd recipe in a row that involves making it… but I just can’t help myself. It’s so EASY. and so creamy. and so, So, SO good.

This time, rather than using it as my ice cream base, or in my banana pudding, or as the filling for a tart, I just kept it plain and simple. I drizzled it over perfect personal-sized angel food cake popovers after steeping it in lemon zest and lemon-thyme, and it is a SHOWSTOPPER. It’s light, and the lemon and custard flavors just meld beautifully…toss in a strawberry and you’ve basically hit jackpot.

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Radical INhospitality, and HB1523

April 11, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

There’s been something on my mind lately, and since I’m trying to live out my value of radical hospitality, I guess I need to talk about it. It’s hard, and I’ve written & rewritten this thing like 4 times, but I feel like I need to share my hurt, my anger, and just a little good news.

So, there’s a funny thing I learned in divinity school which doesn’t seem to be that widely known… Scholars think that Sodom and Gomorrah’s sin was actually Inhospitality.

Weird, huh? Lots of scholars disagree with the interpretation that they were punished for “homosexuality”… but rather have interpreted that the members of these cities were punished for turning their backs on strangers who needed help, and for trying to take advantage of and rape them. In other words, as the Reverend Patrick Cheng puts it, for “Radical Inhospitality.”

I’m not going to argue biblical interpretation with anyone, as I focused on religious education during my studies, but I will say that if Cheng and other biblical scholar’s interpretation is true, my home, my state of Mississippi, the place I love, is in a lot of hot water with God for our statewide elected officials’ actions recently.

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Teeny Tastes of Spring: Buttermilk Custard Tarts with Herbs & Strawberries

April 7, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com 1 Comment

My friend Anne and her honey, Jason, blogged about herbs that taste like fruit several years ago, back when I was only just getting my kitchen-legs, and before I’d been able to grow anything at all and keep it alive for more than a couple of days. I was all kinds of amazed. WHAT? There’s something called pineapple sage? And also lemon basil? Orange Thyme?

Its hard to find these down here in my little old town, BUT I did get some Lemon Thyme yesterday and have been trying it in every way imaginable. I started by garnishing a recipe of boiled custard I made with another of my recent ingredient addictions (buttermilk, obvi) and I have to say, I liked the way combining a typically savory herb with a dessert turned out. See what you think.

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Green Biscuits and Ham

April 5, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

We got out in the dirt this weekend and planted our vegetable garden… the weather was dreamy and it felt so productive to get my sweet little seedlings in the ground.

We’ll have about every color cherry tomato, plus some big ole red Big Boys, and some okra and summer squashes. It’s going to be wonderful IF we can keep the silly deer and other fauna out of them. Gardeners out there, any ideas or tried & true ways for how to keep my little vegetable babies safe?

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Tequila Mockingbird Frozen Margarita

April 1, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

Oh folks, can you stand it? It’s. Almost. Margarita. Weather.

Margarita weather ALSO means that it’s linen and white clothes weather, drippy fish tacos on the back porch weather, read your favorite book (To Kill a Mockingbird, obvi) while sitting outside covered in sunscreen and also mosquita spray weather, and, my personal favorite, black cherry-slash-green apple snocone weather.

I didn’t even know that I liked tequila until I tried silver tequila, and then I literally wanted to drink the whole bottle right then and there.

Some of y’all are thinking, oh, oh tequila. no nonononononononooooooo. (because there was that one night when you turned 22 and you went out dancing with your friends at that blues bar and met Morgan Freeman and then took so many shots that you ended up dancing on top of a car while it was driving through downtown at 2.3 mph.. oh wait…)

But before you say “nooooooo” let me FIRST tell you that this has NO sour mix involved AND is a truly refined cocktail for grownups and not at all like the tequila you may or may not have thrown up for two days straight that night in college.

This margarita recipe is refreshing, a little tart, and tingles in all the right places. You get me?

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