A salad of fresh, garden tomatoes and sweet, summer Vidalia onions, mixed with a salt and pepper mayonnaise dressing and finished with broken saltine crackers, right before serving. It's reminiscent in flavor, of a tomato sandwich!

Old-Fashioned Tomato and Saltine Cracker Salad

Okay, okay... I know that if you've never heard of this before, you're thinking that just doesn't sound right! I get it.

Crackers? Mixed with tomatoes and mayonnaise? It does sound a little odd, and I know, you're thinking mushy, soggy, wet crackers right? Truth is, it's a salad that has been around, at least in the south, for a long time, and, it's actually very, very good.

Sliced squash and chopped onions, caramelized in a skillet with bacon drippings and finished simply with salt, pepper and a pat of butter.

Skillet Squash

You don't really have to wait for summer to prepare summer squash because it's pretty much available year round these days. Still, it's one of my favorite, abundant and inexpensive, summer veggies, whether it's in a casserole, a dressing, in a gratin, or creamed. Heck, I even slice it up and snack on it raw!

A small batch churned version of ice cream, made with a fresh blackberry puree.

Small Batch Blackberry Ice Cream

Let's just start off by saying that it took a few experiments to get to this version of blackberry ice cream. I made three batches, so it's a good thing that I have a blackberry vine that puts out quite a lot of berries every season!

Since no churn ice cream seems to be all the rage here lately, I thought I'd give it a try. I started with the standard base of whipped heavy cream with sweetened condensed milk, but thought I'd add some cream cheese and swirl in the blackberry puree instead of blending it in.

A flavorfully seasoned boil mix to use for a smaller batch of 1 to 2 pounds of jumbo shrimp, with sausage, potatoes and corn.

Small Batch Shrimp Boil

Most shrimp boils around here are done on a back porch, in a propane boiler set up {affil link}, and on a huge scale with often at least 20 pounds of shrimp (or more), and sometimes crabs or crawfish too. Hopefully out of that, we can sneak away a pound or two of peeled shrimp for those dishes we all love that call for already cooked shrimp.

Although I've certainly pan sautéed plenty and grown quite fond of using roasted shrimp when I just need to season a pound or two of shrimp, every once in awhile, I also want those highly seasoned potatoes, corn and sausage that come along with it. Enter the small batch version of my shrimp boil!

Fresh peaches, softened, pureed and stewed for a fruit spread that is summer in a jar.

Peach Butter

When it comes to preserved fruit, I am generally much more of a jam or preserve gal, because while butters are usually pureed and have a smooth texture, I rather enjoy the presence of some chunks of fruit, so I guess it's a texture thing for me.

My Mama never canned, well anything, not that I can recall at least, so I never knew much about the subject and had little interest. Since starting a blog about food however, I've certainly seen a lot and as "butters" go, apple butters are featured all over the place with bloggers in the fall.