Chicken salad, made with cooked chicken and classic seasonings, with the addition of pineapple.

Pineapple Chicken Salad

I love a good chicken salad!

I make one that is a basic deli-style chicken salad the most often, but I've ventured out to try some new things over the years of blogging about food and recipes.

I have about a half dozen full recipe posts for different chicken salads, though some of those have multiple variations in the notes that I've also tried over the years, and yet more in drafting stages.

A smoked bone-in half ham, baked and finished with a glaze patterned on our Southern Jezebel Sauce, made with apple jelly, pineapple preserves and pepper jelly mixed with lemon-lime soda.

Apple and Pineapple "Jezebel" Glazed Ham

I love cooking a baked ham all year round, so it's not just a holiday thing for me. I cook them for a planned meal, then put up freezer bags of vacuum-sealed ham chunks and the ham bone for later.

I wanted to give y'all another ham and had in mind the old school, traditional pineapple ham made with 7-up, Sprite or ginger ale, but decided to step it up a little bit by incorporating elements from my jezebel sauce, which is often used as a side condiment with baked ham, but using it here instead as a glaze.

A quick and easy dessert salad, made with fruit, pudding mix, non-dairy topping, chopped pecans, and topped with a pinch of nuts, coconut and Maraschino cherries.

Pineapple Orange Fluff

Okay, seriously. How can you not love a fluff? Easy to throw together. So creamy and delicious!

There are lots of different variations on it these days, but the standard base ingredients usually include some kind of fruit, a complimentary flavor of pudding mix and non-dairy topping (aka Cool Whip) at minimum. I typically like to add mini marshmallows and chopped pecans also.

Three of the most popular versions, and my personal favorites, are pistachio, orange and pineapple, although there are a multitude of variations left only to the imagination! Some recipes these days use pie filling, some sweetened condensed milk, cottage cheese, some use Jello instead of pudding, some use sour cream, some even use flavored coffee creamers or extracts.

Pineapple Icebox Cake, made with layers of Nilla wafers, a blend of cream cheese, pudding and condensed milk with pineapple and whipped topping. I like to finish mine with a little coconut, maraschino cherries and a sprinkle of chopped nuts.

Pineapple Icebox Cake

Can y'all believe that summer is almost out the door? Well, it won't be temperature-wise around here for months yet, but kids around here have been back in school for weeks now and we're already coming up on Labor Day?

Well, are y'all sittin' down? Because last month I shared a Summer Berry Cobbler and today, I already have a dessert again!! I say that, because, if you've been around here any length of time, you know that I'm much more of a savory gal than I am a sweets lover.

Spinach Smoothie Green Drink, Clean(er) Eating and the Year in Review

 

Clean(er) eating, the year in review and my favorite Spinach Smoothie Green Drink

Clean(er) Eating and the Year in Review

Don't worry... that "cleaner eating" thing doesn't mean we're changing our website and recipes, and I'll explain on down the post, but I do want to first say Happy New Year y'all!

I hope you got in your traditional Southern New Year foods by now - or whatever is customary where you live - and I truly wish you much health, wealth and happiness in 2016. Yes, this is my first post of the new year - mostly because, well... I've been spending time with my family, my grandkids, the animal kingdom, and my favorite 3-Rs... relaxing, resting and reading.

A traditional baked ham popular in the south, glazed with a mixture of brown sugar, pineapple and mustard, and a little whisky if you're so inclined, baked in a 7-up or ginger ale tub and decorated with cloves, pineapple rings and cherries.

Old School Pineapple Glazed Baked Ham

If there were a classic combination for a "southern" baked ham, it would probably include brown sugar, mustard and pineapple. Every once in awhile we throw in a little "coke"... whether that's Co-cola, 7-up, Sprite, or Ginger Ale. If you're from The South, you completely understand that statement!

A classic, cold salad made from carrots, raisins and pineapple, sometimes coconut and peanuts, and dressed with a sweetened mayonnaise.

Classic Carrot Raisin Salad

We are still in the process of moving out of our old home, while the new house is looking more and more like we have lived here for 20 years! And the garage, oh you don't even want to know what that looks like, but as I have the energy, I bring in a box and go through it.

We are moving all of the Christmas stuff, the china from the china cabinet and have a freezer and a few pieces of furniture to go and we'll be finished... finally. The Cajun and I were so tired and hungry yesterday afternoon that we stopped by Hartz's Fried Chicken and treated ourselves to their buffet for an early supper.

Pineapple (Hawaiian) Baked Beans

Pineapple Baked Beans, often referred to as Hawaiian Baked Beans, have that familiar spicy, sweet and sour taste we Southerners love. Great with Atlanta brisket.

Pineapple Baked Beans

I have made my baked beans the same way for literally decades and never ventured away from them. Never needed to. They are basic, but reliable and tasty, and I was often requested to bring them to parties and functions over the years.

Classic cranberry relish, made from uncooked, fresh cranberries, oranges, apples and pineapple.

Cranberry Relish

When I was growing up, there was one cranberry sauce at our house over the holidays. The familiar, cylinder-shaped, super sweet, jellied cranberry sauce, decorated with ridges molded right from the can it slurped out of.

It's one thing in common from our holiday tables past, that so many of us Southerners still connect to nostalgically, no matter where we grew up.

Apple Julep, a refreshing drink made with apple juice, pineapple, orange and lemon juice, is bumped up to a sangria with the addition of white wine and rum for a refreshing adult drink.

Apple Julep Sangria

If you've ever been to the Applewood Farmhouse Restaurant in the Sevierville/Pigeon Forge area of Tennessee, chances are you've had their signature Applewood Julep. The restaurant, a renovated farmhouse, serves good ole country cooking and is so homey that it even has a great sittin' porch - if you're so inclined. It's been awhile since I was up that way, but isn't that area of the country just beautiful?

A simple and classic fruit salad made with mandarin oranges, pineapple chunks, marshmallows, sweetened coconut, maraschino cherries and dressed with sour cream.

Mandarin Orange Fruit Salad

This fruit salad has been around a very long time and is another one of those recipes that falls back to my old Bell's Best cookbooks. Those books and that trusty red Betty Crocker binder is literally where many of us southern gals, and often our mothers, picked up a lot of the familiar recipes you see on your favorite southern sites and food blogs today. They were certainly key cookbooks in my learning experience as a young bride in the 70s.

It's very similar to the Old Fashioned 5 Cup Salad, and, in fact, if you're a fan of the movie The Help, set in the early 1960s, this is the very salad that Sissy Spacek, aka Mrs. Walters, ate while she watched The Guiding Light during the bridge parties - though in the movie she calls this recipe ambrosia, as do some of you.

So funny the part where Skeeter walks through the room, and with her bubbly personality and big ole smile says "Hi Mrs. Walters!" who promptly responds by pointing to the television with her fork and saying only "I'm watching my story." Reminds me so much of my Mama and my Nanny Rosalie. You simply did not interrupt them during their "stories," or if you did, the house, or your hair, better be on fire. Seriously!

Mandarin Orange Cake is what this dessert is typically known as in this part of The Deep South, but in many other areas of The South, this is more commonly known as Pig Pickin' Cake, though it has many names.

Mandarin Orange Pig Pickin' Cake

How y'all liking that vintage Tupperware Cake Taker plate up there?

I know for photo styling I should have used my mama's fancy footed cake plate, but this is one of those refrigerated cakes so in the cake taker it went. This one, in that classic mustard color, dates back to the 70s of course, and has been used many, many times. I actually have two of them - one was mine from back then and the other my mama's, which she very well may have purchased at a Tupperware party at my house!

I also have the rectangular one for sheet cakes. Anybody else still have one of these oldies hanging around?

Old Fashioned Baked Pineapple Casserole

 

Old School Baked Pineapple Casserole, a favorite holiday side dish in the south, made with the unlikely combination of pineapple layered with crushed Ritz crackers and shredded cheddar cheese. Somehow it works!

Baked Pineapple Casserole

We southerners sure love our pineapple dishes. From sweet to savory and everywhere in between, we enjoy it in a multitude of dishes, and this is one of the oldest. Another one of those tasty dishes that doesn't really photograph all that pretty, and, at first glance, certainly seems an unlikely and odd combination of ingredients to pair together.

Like its southern sisters Watergate Salad, 5 Cup Salad, and Old Fashioned Cherry Coke Salad, it's also another one of those difficult to place recipes in a menu listing - but, indeed, it is intended to be a side dish, and not a dessert.

Often called Banana Split Cake, this layered dessert has the same base ingredients from a banana split but in a convenient and well loved layered pan dessert.

Layered Banana Split Dessert

Take the elements of a banana split - bananas, pineapple, strawberries, whipped cream, chocolate syrup, maraschino cherries, and chopped nuts - layer that on top of a cookie crust, throw in a layer of that fabulous cream cheese, powdered sugar, whipped cream mixture as a stand-in for the usual ice cream, and you have one well loved Layered Banana Split Dessert.

 

Nobody seems to know where Jezebel Sauce originated or how it came to arrive at that name, but the combination of apple, pineapple, spicy mustard and horseradish have been a southern favorite for decades.

Jezebel Sauce

Nobody seems to know the true origins of Jezebel Sauce, though Mississippi is one state that lays claim to having invented it, along with Louisiana and several other southern states. I have no idea how it came to be named either, because if you know anything at all about the biblical Jezebel, you know she wasn't a very nice person, so I won't even venture to guess.