A cookie bar made with cherry pie filling and blueberries and drizzled with a powdered sugar glaze.

Cherry Pie Bars

This is another one of those recipes that kept passing by on my personal Facebook timeline so much that I decided to make it for our Memorial Day celebration with my son and daughter-in-law.

Since that holiday is the unofficial beginning of summer and falls right in the midst of crawfish season, they host a crawfish boil every year, along with the usual hot dogs and burgers.

One of my son's closest friends, Brad, is the master crawfish cook, so he always handles the cooking of the crawfish and does an excellent job of it. They sure were good this year! The boil has become a bit of an annual tradition for them and we look forward to it every year, though it was so hot that day, that The Cajun and I didn't stick around too long.

Old Fashioned Slow Stewed Southern Style Green Beans

Fresh green beans, slow stewed in the Southern way with cubed or sliced fatback, salt pork or bacon and shown here with potatoes.

Old Fashioned Slow Stewed Southern Green Beans

I make my speedier version of green beans the same way most of the time - a little bacon, a little onion  and a little chicken broth or plain water. Sometimes, new potatoes are added. Doesn't matter whether the beans are fresh, frozen or canned - I use the same method for them all, and each of those elements add so much depth and flavor to green beans. I love them.

But when I have the time, this is the way that I love them the most. Fresh green beans, snapped and cooked in the old-fashioned way - a low and slow simmer in water, with a little fatback or salt pork and pepper is all there is to it. I don't even add onion to these, because, as much as I love and use onion, I want the pure flavor of the beans and fatback to be predominate and not the onion. Once they are done, I like to stir in a tablespoon of bacon fat or butter to add just a little extra richness. Taste them first, then add other seasonings as you like.

Fresh tomatoes, roughly chopped and marinated in a herb vinaigrette. Serve as is, spoon over a mixed garden salad, use as a garnish with grilled meats, or spoon over individual plates of plain shredded lettuce.

Marinated Tomatoes

With the big move to our new home, I planted a little late this year, and just picked the first of my homegrown tomatoes off the vine in my backyard. They will soon be part of my annual summer ritual.

This year, I was short on time to dig a garden or set up raised beds like before, so I just did a few containers of tomatoes in 5 gallon buckets and planted some herbs, beans and cucumbers right outside the patio door.

Grilled Huli Huli Chicken, a popular Hawaiian-style barbecued chicken, basted with a honey and brown sugar sweetened, soy and pineapple barbecue sauce.

Grilled Huli Huli Chicken

I don't know about y'all, but the last couple of months I have been busier than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs! Between buying a new house, moving, renovating the old house for sale and now that summer's rolled around, spending a lot more time with the grandkid's on summer vacation too... I truly don't know if I'm coming or going anymore. I sure could use a vacation of my own - Florida beaches here I come!

If you've ever been on a Florida vacation and done the luau show and dinner somewhere, you have likely had some form of this Hawaiian-style barbecued chicken. I've never been to Disney where we didn't go to one either at the Polynesian Hotel or up the road at the Wantilan Luau at Universal Orlando.

Luau shots from one of our Orlando vacations!

Yes, I know they are touristy and to some degree a bit cheesy, but I just love those shows and I really feel like I'm on vacation when I go to one.