Summer Berries and a Happy Fourth, y'all!!

Y’all have fun Fourth of July plans I’m sure. Lakes, beaches, poolside barbeques and fireworks will fill our rosters and blow up our social media (@jamestfarmer BTDubs for my Instagram) and I can’t wait to see all those fun pics! I may even sneak a pic of Baby Napp… who am I kidding… I snap pics of that child every chance I can! I LOVE being Uncle Brubbs!!

My sisters, bro-in-law, Baby Napp and I will all be together on the Georgia coast with some friends fishing, enjoying the scenery and eating of course! One thing I’m sure to mix up this weekend is my Summer Berries with Mint Whipped Cream from Dinner on the Grounds.

Elegance and ease go hand-in-hand with this dish, and the splash of mint flavor melds the whole dish together. What is it about fresh summer herbs and produce? Nothing better!!! Plus I love that it can be served in heirloom silver berry bowls with berry spoons or right out of a Mason jar or Solo Cup! And it’s the perfect, refreshing dessert to any meal.

Stir up a bowl of your favorite summer berries, whip up a batch of minted whipped cream and celebrate our freedom! I can hardly think of a better way to celebrate… well maybe with a second serving! Happy Fourth, y’all!

Summer Berries with Mint Whipped Cream

Recipe from Dinner on the Grounds – Southern Suppers and Soirées

Photography by Emily Followill

I am fascinated by the accouterments that accompany food. Berries in particular have their own spoons and bowls and even boats (as does gravy). Yet, in all the elegance that can be construed from silver service and fine china, there is hardly anything more elegant than the berries and whipped cream themselves, period. I like add a splash of mint extract to the cream for an ever-so-delightful flavor boost. And then I like to garnish with mint.

2 pints fresh berries

2 cups heavy whipping cream

1/2 cup sour cream

Splash of vanilla

2 tablespoons powdered sugar

Pinch of cream of tartar*

1/2 teaspoon mint extract or more

Mint leaves for garnish, optional

Wash and dry the berries; slice the larger ones if you wish. Divide among four individual dishes.

Whip the two creams together with the vanilla, sugar, cream of tartar and mint extract. Dollop whipped cream on the berries and garnish with mint.

*The cream of tartar thickens and also stiffens the creams, and I recommend it only when needing the cream to remain fairly stiff. I actually like the cream to fall and drizzle into the berries. 

A Peachy Keen Series

To quote my business manager Mrs. Coody (aka Laura Lyn), "...it's summer in Georgia. We eat peaches. We eat peaches on everything - for every meal!" Amen to that!!!

I love how peaches can fit the bill for any meal and snack in between! Over cereal or with yogurt in the morning, on a salad at lunch or even grilled and drizzled with an array of delicacies such as balsamic vinegar, honey or vanilla for supper dinner or dessert! I simply delight in a bowl of peaches with some cold milk - my go to peachy treat!



In honor of the peach season, I am sharing with y'all a few of my favorite peach dishes from my books. A Peachy Keen series if you will! So let's celebrate the season with peaches for, on, with and in everything we can imagine! Enjoy y'all!

Cornbread Crisps with Peach Salsa

Recipe from A Time to Cook – Dishes from my Southern Sideboard

Photography by Helen Norman

Often when entertaining, I like to serve some sort of cornbread crisp with a dip or a topping. Peach Salsa is just the ticket to a dance of flavors and textures. The splash of fruity sweetness adds a delectable complement to a basic fresh salsa.

Peach Salsa

3-4 medium to large vine ripe tomatoes

1 small onion or 2 shallots, or both

3-4 garlic cloves

3-4 small peppers or 2 larger ones (e.g., bell, banana, or even jalapeño), chopped, hotter peppers deseeded

4 large basil leaves, cut in chiffonade

chopped cilantro to taste

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

dash of cayenne pepper

2-3 peaches

¼ cup olive oil

splash of lime juice

Combine all ingredients in either a food processor or a bowl. Process for a smooth salsa, or mash for a chunkier texture. Serve with cornbread crisps.

Cornbread Crisps

Bake your favorite cornbread recipe with only half the batter in the skillet. When done, cut into rounds and toast to additional crispiness. Alternatively, use regular thickness of cornbread, cut into rounds and slice open-face style. Toast the rounds to make crisps.

Farmer's Note: I love to support locally, and always grab my peaches from the best... Pearson Farm and Lane Southern Orchard!

Cashiers is my Happy Place - The 2013 Designers Showhouse

Ever since childhood, when Mama and Daddy would pile us into the Suburban and start our northerly trek to Cashiers from Middle Georgia, I have relished the very thought of heading to those sacred hills.

A feeling washes over me in Cashiers - a calmness bathed in hay-fern scented air and cool summer nights. Cashiers is like summer camp for grownups! The same childhood anticipation and delight - somewhat akin to Christmas morning - still surges my soul the night before I leave for the mountains.

For the past four summers, I have had the utmost pleasure and so much fun really of being a part of the Cashiers Historical Society's Designers Showhouse - the pinnacle of my summer and a highlight of my year. This last summer, the thrill was monumental, for I was selected as the designer for the main living room! Y'all, this room, née, I say great hall from a lodge more so, was truly the peak experience to show some design prowess.

The space was nearly a thousand square feet and required vast amounts of furniture. Thankfully, I own a small shop, but more thankfully I have friends in the design business to loan me fabulous finds to fill up the space. Filling up though is not the goal- proper placement and designing a lifestyle was to be the ultimate achievement.

My amazingly talented friend Kathleen Rivers served as Showhouse Chair and immediately presented me with my first challenge- paint! The room had little wall space but a vast, sloping ceiling and leftover bits of odds and end paneling that, that, along with the shag carpet mind you, enveloped you into a time capsule of midcentury style - but not the chic midcentury style one desires!

I went to my go-to colors of Benjamin Moore's Linen White for the walls and Ice Cap for the ceiling - which took some convincing but delivered a thrilling result. The mountain views at this home are nothing short of breathtaking - almost more Montana than North Carolina - and I needed to recreate that sky and light into the living room. My said colors proved the pudding! For the floor, wall-to-wall sisal blanketed and further anchored the nature-inspired palette.

 

Since this space is a living room, I decided to create such a room - a room for living! Dining, sitting, visiting and entertaining all had to fit within the space for a true living room.

Anchoring the room was a French beret table my wonderful friend Sally loaned me from her eponymous shop, Dovetail Antiques, in Cashiers. The table was literally one of the heaviest and most challenging pieces (they had to walk it down a sloping knoll and then up stairs and across a deck) my buddies from McCorquedale Transfer even installed for me, but I knew it was the table. Plus, Ollie, the stuffed otter who was to be the table's centerpiece, was going to look so handsome atop this sensational table and epicenter of the tableau in turn. My friend Jason Moattar loaned me the tribal, diamond-patterned rug that kept the dinging space anchored with an earthiness and casualness that the Cashiers' style affords – tradition with a twist!

Three seating areas then served as a triumvirate of grouping for which to relax, converse, enjoy a fire from the dueling fireplaces or simply take in the scenery. The two fireplace seating areas were duets of leather wing chairs from Holland and Company complete with an Irish pine coffee table for one grouping and a simple, heavy woven white upholstered ottoman for the other. Thus these accouterments gave each spot a place for display, propping up your feet or even a casual dinner. My dear and super-talented friend, Carrie Beskin, loaned me two limed French wine tables that I used for side tables - I'm a sucker for limed wood and Carrie was so kind to loan me hers. Blue and white lamps given a contemporary twist with acrylic bases and flowers and family photos dotted the tables too and, thus, brought personal touches to the room.

 

My buddy Beau Holland lent me a gracious stack of stag horns to crest the soaring walls along with a pair of handsome leather club chairs that I paired with a white sofa, limed pine and zinc tables, a driftwood and glass coffee table and a Black Forest carving (a family piece my sisters and cousins will have to fight me for‼!). Wispy, gauzy white linen hung simply from bamboo rods on the five sets of French doors leading to the deck and awesome views beyond. The deck was simple in its decor with antique hickory rockers, garden stools in shades of aqua, jade and celadon and some iron turkeys nestled into faux bois planters of fern and hosta. My always gracious and fellow gardener Judy at the Village Gardener in Cashiers outfitted the awe-inspired hanging baskets that suspended and catapulted into the mountain forest with summer plantings that fair so well in the mountains.

 

Shelves stacked with books new and old, a Bavarian fish set and some vintage art further gave the room purpose as a place to study, read and boast a collection. A short wall in height and width still got the grand treatment with a Jacobean chest and fabulous pine bullseye mirror from Beau Holland and some of my favorite things too - my French needlepoint bird chairs, my vintage Audubon prints, a splash of blue and white and my favorite green Italian bowl filled to the brim with North Carolina apples! A pair of French iron candlesticks turned lamps shed the light on this subject matter. This wall and its symmetry and balance were a fun counterpoint to the white sofa and dark leather chairs on the opposite wall. High and low in colors and weights and even textures are so fulfilling to layer upon a room and house. A pop of turquoise in the Clarence House dragonfly pillows on the needlepoint demonstrates such a layering credo. 

Speaking of pillows, brown plaids and checks along with blue ikats and stripes all found their way into my scheme. Blue and brown and white with whispers of green became the calling card of the room (along with quirky taxidermy of course) and thus reflected the nature just outside. And since the land at this home is a phenomenal horse riding retreat, large equestrian canvases by the uber talented Meredith Keith, from Birmingham accented the antique timber mantles and were guarded by white temple jars that with another pair too became a part of the room's design.

With Cashiers acting as my happy place since childhood, putting together a great room of favorite things made it even more so of a happy place as a "grown up." I hope y'all enjoy these photos of reflection and remembrance of such a joyful experience for me. I was in terrific company with the other designers, and I can assuredly say that this Showhouse was a happy place for all!

 

 photography by Emily Followill

(before pics)

FARMER'S DOZEN: Mary Kay Andrews

  Akin to a baker's dozen, my Farmer's Dozen is a quantity of a dozen or so questions - a series of questions with fellow designers, authors, tastemakers, friends and Southerners alike

I've read almost all of MKA's books... The latest one is tempting me to take off for the summer and read the hot days away... But alas I must keep my day job! 

Kathy aka MKA is a delightful dear friend of mine. Anyone who reads her works feels befriended by her - her writing voice is such a part of her natural persona that each page is akin to a soulful conversation with a longtime pal.

Kathy and I share a passion for blue and white, antique shopping and IGA fried chicken - what better foundation for a friendship? Whether we are shopping at Scott's or lunching at Tybee whilst gazing onto the steely Atlantic or emailing throughout the week words of encouragement, plans for book launches or just to say "hey y'all," any time or text with MKA is a jewel! I'm sure y'all would agree! 

Ladies and gents, without further adieu, please enjoy this Farmer's Dozen with JTF and MKA!! 

Mary KayAndrews is the New York Times bestselling author of Ladies Night, Christmas Bliss, Spring Fever, Summer Rental, The Fixer Upper, Deep Dish, Blue Christmas, Savannah Breeze, Hissy Fit, Little Bitty Lies, and Savannah Blues. A former journalist for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, she lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Farmer’s Dozen: Mary Kay Andrews

1. We both have a love for IGA fried chicken. What would be a perfect Southern meal for you?Anything you cook! If this hypothetical meal were magically calorie-free, I’d love some fried chicken, mac’-n’-cheese, dead ripe sliced tomatoes with homemade balsamic dressing drizzled over, devilled eggs, zucchini, homemade biscuits with fig preserves and a big ol’ wedge of homemade pound cake. And then I’d nap for the rest of the summer.

2.  Whether at Scotts or your Tybee Island cottage, I love the times we’ve had to eat, laugh, and visit. Where do you go to write and rejuvenate? I love to look up from my laptop to see beautiful scenery, whether it’s our beach house Ebbtide, on Tybee Island, a borrowed house on a lake in the North Georgia mountains, or just my front porch, where I’m working right now, looking out past the fern baskets and pink knock-out roses.

3.  My favorite book of yours is Hissy Fit. I love that you write about fictional people in real places. What was your inspiration for the setting and characters in Hissy Fit? For that book I needed a good Southern girl who is provoked into throwing the biggest hissy fit ever. I made her an interior designer, because I’m a decorator in denial, and I set the book in Madison because I wanted a real small town where old secrets suddenly come bubbling up from the past.

4. Which character in your books closest resembles you? All my characters have a bit of my DNA in them—only they’re younger, cuter, thinner and smarter than me. And they definitely have more man problems!

5. What did you call your grandmothers? Share a story about them…maybe something you inherited from her? My maternal grandmother was “Gram.” And my paternal grandmother “Nanny” was an Irish immigrant who lived in Chicago, so I only saw her once a year, in May, when she came to visit. My mother’s mother was a piece of work. She had all kinds of memorable expessions, like “hold your horses, Sister Perkins,” or “that girl looks like country come to town,” or “looks like a sack-full of cats going to the river.” Maybe I inherited my love for colorful language from my Gram.

6. Who inspires you? I’m inspired by people who are selfless and giving, by women from all walks of life who face immeasurable obstacles, but still soldier on, raising children, feeding hungry people, getting things done without a lot of fanfare. I’m inspired by those who dare to dream—and then keep trying.

7.  What are some of your favorite heirlooms? What do you love about them? How have you incorporated them into your décor? I have a few old black and white snapshots of family members at the same beach in my hometown in St. Petersburg, Fla. One of my mom, at the age of 17, modeling a swimsuit on the beach. Another of me, as a toddler, in a droopy cotton swimsuit on that same beach just a few years later. There’s a grainy one of my grandmother, in a depression-era dress and hat, camping on that same beach. And yet another black and white, of my son, maybe age 8, hamming it up for the camera on another Florida beach. I have them all framed and displayed in the stairwell of our beach house on Tybee. I love the sense of continuity in the pictures, the care-free memories they evoke, and the visual link to members of my family who are now gone.

8. What are your favorite scents from the home and garden? I love the smell of gardenias—we have a huge shrub in our font yard. Anything lemony or citrusy. I burn Archepilago’s Red Currant candles when I write.

9.  I think a coffee table says a lot about your life and style. What’s on your coffee table right now, and what is your coffee table? I have stacks of decorating books and coffee table books, like Dinner on the Grounds, a huge tole tray painted with flowers, a Disney princess coloring book and a lidless white ironstone tureen full of crayons for my grandchildren. The table itself is an antique oval pine harvest table, cut down to coffee table height.

10.  If you were a color, what would you be and why? Blue—it’s the color of serenity, calm, deep water. All of which I crave in my life.

11. What’s your favorite room in your home? Probably the little sun-room off the living room in our 1925 Craftsman cottage. It’s where I wrote large chunks of my latest book, and where I take catnaps.

12.  Do you collect anything in particular? If so, how did you start? I started collecting blue and white transferware after my mother gifted me with a few pieces of Blue Willow from my grandmother’s house. I have a nice collection of vintage tin lithographed beach toys, which I display at our beach house, like sand pails, shovels and watering cans, that started when I found two toy watering cans at an estate sale for a couple bucks.

13. You’re having a dinner party could invite anyone… Including any character from history, who would be at your dinner party? (Pssst, I am included on the guest list) Hmm. Audrey Hepburn, because she was beautiful and compassionate and involved. Julian Fellowes, so I could ask him about next season’s Downton Abbey, Amelia Earhart—I want to find out what happened to her. And Truman Capote, who knew everybody important in the last half of the 20^th century—and who loved to dish the dirt about all of them.