Summer Cookout Attire
What to wear? That is always the question when faced with a summer BBQ or cookout with friends in the bluegrass state. There are ways to still look cute even when it's hot and humid!
The Fancy Cookout- Dress: French Connection, Shoes: Miu Miu
The best advice is to dress comfortably! We all know there's nothing worse than being hot and sweaty in an outfit that is uncomfortable and binding.
My last piece of advice- don't show up empty handed. Always take a side dish or a bottle of wine to a cookout that you are invited to attend.
Ale-8 Minty Julep Slush
Sometimes it's just too hot outside for a cocktail.
Well, that may be a little bit of a stretch, but sometimes you want a cool, refreshing drink that isn't boozy. Or something frozen, fun and unexpected for your younger guests or for those who don't imbibe.
This summer, it seems I can't get enough
. Something about the smoothness, the velvety texture, and the gingery finish just works. And, I'm always looking for ways to utilize the bumper crop of mint in my garden. Put the two together, and you have the Minty Julep.
Recently, I was thinking about
all the reasons I love a mint julep
(not just on Derby!), and realized that my summertime obsessions could be put to good use. My spearmint is strong enough to stand up to the bright ginger of the Ale-8, and slushy ice is always a good thing. These are great all summer long, and would be a fantastic alternative to a bourbon drink for your Derby party next spring.
Ale-8 "Minty Julep" Slush
2- 12 oz. bottles Ale-8-One or Diet Ale-8
1 to 2 cups ice
Several sprigs of mint
Pour one bottle of Ale-8 in a saucepan and add two or three sprigs of mint. Bring to a boil until reduced by about half. Strain and let cool completely.
Add a cup or so of ice to a food processor (or one of those fancy margarita machines, if you have one) and blend until slushy.
For a mint julep-style mocktail
: Serve immediately, fill 8oz glasses with ice, pour cooled simple syrup over ice, and garnish with remaining mint sprigs. (You may want to add a little additional Ale-8, to taste.)
For a slushier drink:
Pour syrup and a cup or so of the crushed ice into a freezer bag. Let freeze several hours or overnight.
Of course, if you want to add a little kick, that would be good, too...
I love those purse-sized bottles!
Healthy Summer Eats
To someone like me, who isn't a stellar chef, the art of cooking is a craft I wish I could master.
This summer, I've been searching for some light, healthier fare to make and take as a dish to summer cookouts. I love traditional summer foods like burgers, brats, and potato salad as much as the next Southern girl, but my waistline needs some fresh vegetables and healthy grains!
I've managed to come up with two recipes to add to my small repertoire of go-to foods. These aren't extremely original, but I modified some pretty standard ideas and made them my own. Rest assured that if I can master these recipes, then they are easy and fast. They've been a hit at every gathering I've taken them to. I hope they serve you as well!
I featured both of these recipes on my healthy living blog, but they're perfect whether you're counting calories or not.
Black Bean, Corn & Mango Salsa
by
Prep Time: 25 minutes
Cook Time: 0
Keywords: no-cook appetizer entree salad side gluten-free nut-free soy-free vegan vegetarian black bean corn mango Cinco de Mayo July 4th spring summer
Ingredients (6 cups)
- 1.5 15-oz. cans black beans, drained
- 1 15-oz. can sweet corn, drained
- 1 C cherry tomatoes, quartered
- 1/2 C green onions, chopped
- 1/4 C cilantro, finely chopped
- 1 mango, cubed
- 2 T lime juice
- 1 T olive oil
- chili seasoning, to taste
- garlic salt, to taste
- 1 avocado
Instructions
Combine all ingredients except avocado, stirring well to mix. Chill.
Serve with sliced avocado on top.
This salsa works great alone, as a dip for tortilla chips or stuffed into a whole wheat pita!
Quinoa Tabouleh
by
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 15 minutes
Keywords: appetizer entree side gluten-free vegan vegetarian sugar-free soy-free nut-free quinoa Mediterranean spring summer
Ingredients (8 cups)
- 2 cups water
- 1 cup quinoa
- 1 pinch salt
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
- 1/4 cup lemon juice
- 3 tomatoes, diced
- 1 cucumber, diced
- 1 bunch green onions, diced
- Fresh mint, chopped, to taste
- Fresh cilantro, chopped, to taste
Instructions
1. Bring water to a boil in a saucepan. Add quinoa and pinch of salt. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for about 15 minutes or until no water remains when fluffed with a fork.
2. Meanwhile, combine all other ingredients in a large bowl.
3. Add quinoa to the bowl and mix well. Allow to cool.
4. Best served chilled.
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Summer Vegetables
Garden-fresh vegetables are the quintessential summer food. You can keep your barbecue, your ice cream, or your picnic fare. Where I come from, it's not summer without fresh green beans, corn and tomatoes.
Now, a few years back, a best-selling book was based on the premise that you shouldn't eat anything that your grandmother wouldn't recognize. The rest of the year, I can't get enough sushi or Indian food. I slavishly replicate the signature French dishes that made Julia and Ina famous, and I've developed a bit of a specialty in making Cajun dishes. But, in the summer, I find myself cooking the exact same simple country meals that my grandmother has always made, using the very same varietals that she's been growing for six decades or so. Fried chicken, white half runner green beans and silver queen corn, with a crudité plate of cucumbers, beefy red tomatoes and green onions. You don't question it. You just serve it.
Growing up in a small Eastern Kentucky town, I just assumed that everyone had access to garden vegetables all summer long. My grandparents had a huge, bountiful garden. We're talking "rent a mule to plow it" huge. My uncle now plants a similar garden every year, providing us all with more vegetables than we could possibly eat, can, or freeze. I guess I'll always be a country girl at heart; I take for granted that, no matter where I live, this summer harvest will be available. I laughingly refer to my family as my own personal CSA because it seems that, all summer long, somebody is always bringing me more veggies than I could ever use. A few years ago, I memorably asked my grandmother to send me a few tomatoes. The following weekend, she sent my parents to Lexington with seventy-six!
Food, summer, and small-town life will always be interconnected for me because of my family's commitment to gardening. My grandmother, the queen of the subtle nuances between varietals, has a network of friends from whom she purchases certain vegetables that we can't quite get to grow or which we need in mass quantities for preserving purposes. Growing up, I thought that everybody had a "corn man"; ours is named Maurice. (Our "raspberry lady", who recently passed away, was named Dottie.) It was a fascinating little microcosm to observe -- my granny and her friends had been trading for so long that they no longer even had to ask questions or call ahead, they just showed up when they had a crop to sell. It was a dramatic representation of the "grandmother foods" foodie manifesto, and a powerful lesson in community.
These days, I find that my hometown is starting to show signs of the foodie-fication that has swept America in recent years. A recent trip to the Prestonsburg Food City yielded Voss Water (in the coveted glass bottles, no less!) and organic quinoa. (Try to say that in a thick Appalachian accent. I dare you!) The same day, I even found Arencita Rossa at the Wal-Mart. Now, I'll never complain about this kind of diversity, since I never met a pretentious food I didn't like. I found it far odder, though, when I saw a sign for the Floyd County Farmers' Market. We've always had roadside produce stands, but never something this centralized. It's definitely more yuppie and "citified" than we could have imagined even a decade ago. You may see farmers' markets all over cities like Lexington or Louisville, but it seemed somehow out of step in a small rural town. While it's a far cry from the house calls that Maurice makes, it's simply a new way of keeping "grandmother foods" and the farming community alive.
Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter if you're serving your green beans with quinoa or cornbread. It's largely immaterial if you grow your crops yourself, buy them from your corn man, or visit your local farmers' market. Your tomatoes can be a straightforward red fruit or a pricey, multicolored heirloom, and your corn can be the even hue of Silver Queen or the mixed kernels of Peaches and Cream. Farm-fresh Kentucky vegetables will always be the taste of summer.
Kentucky BBQ: Butt Rubb'in Good
Summertime brings out swimsuits, mosquito spray, bourbon on the rocks (or bourbon ale, if you're so inclined), and hopefully lots of great summer food and picnics. For me, summer brings out the pork-lover in me... as long as it's traditionally smoked and served with awesome sauce. Bonus points if the pork is equally tasty sans sauce (as I typically don't eat sugar).
Enter my favorite Lexington BBQ joint: KY Butt Rubb'in BBQ!
Yes, I totally buy pork by the pound at a place with "butt" in the name. If you tasted it, you'd understand.
Everything at Butt Rubb'in is smoked in a big, old smoker - no gas allowed. It's a small place off of Southland Drive, across from the Good Foods Co-Op, and next to Old Kentucky Chocolates. There is a small bar where you can grab a beer and your carryout order along with some tables for dine in.
I typically don't sway from the pulled pork, although I ventured out of my comfort zone and ordered a pound of their chicken salad last week which was RIDICULOUSLY good. Super flavorful smoked chicken with pecans. Forgo the bread or crackers when eating this chicken salad - just grab a fork and dig in.
In addition to their great meats, they also have what are probably the best tasting onion rings I've ever had. They are super fresh, hand sliced and battered, and fried up light and crispy. Also? Sweet potato fries (with cinnamon and sugar) and collard greens. GREENS, y'all!
If the food wasn't enough to send you there, then the shirts will send you over the edge:
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| Amazing, right? |
Check out their menu online, and call for carryout (typical wait time is 5-10 minutes. Seriously.) or stop in to dine there. Just steer clear on Sundays as they're closed. Mondays they're only open until 6pm.
HerKentucky Story: Ashley Turner of Pink Julep Abroad
HerKentucky is thrilled to introduce y'all to Ashley Turner, the blogger behind the fashion and lifestyle blog Pink Julep Abroad. Ashley, a Paintsville native, lives in London (England, not Laurel County) after stops in Miami, NYC, and Grand Cayman. Girl knows a thing or two about travel! Ashley graciously agreed to share her travel story with us today. You can get to know Ashley better on her Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or Spotify.
I have lived all over the place...
Miami, New York, The Cayman Islands and I now call London home. No
matter how far I roam, my story started in Painstville, Kentucky, a tiny
town known locally as "the land between the lakes." The one thing that
really stays with me from my Eastern Kentucky upbringing is the
music. Situated along US 23, also known as "the Country Music Highway",
there was no shortage of musical inspiration with some of the greats
like Loretta Lynn, Ricky Skaggs, Dwight Yoakam, The Judds and Keith
Whitley coming from the surrounding area.
 |
| Country Music Highway Museum, Paintsville |
My
family, like lots of others in Paintsville, was always a musical one. My
parents were both musicians and music educators and my uncle played in a
few rock bands in the 80's & 90's, later becoming a member of The
Kentucky Opry, so we went to concerts all the time. Sometime around the
age of 10 years old, I started singing and getting involved in small
productions and choirs. By the time I was 13, I was performing in
musicals at the local high school alongside Chris Stapleton, now a successful musician & songwriter in Nashville. At age 15, I started spending my summers working at Jenny Wiley Theatre, an outdoor summerstock ampitheatre located within the scenic Jenny Wiley State Park.
 |
| Ashley in blue on the far left in Oklahoma, Jenny Wiley Theatre 1999. |
Working
summerstock is no easy task - the hours were long, the pay was almost
nothing (the first year I made $50 a week before taxes) and the work was
hard, but as a teenager, I had invaluable experiences there and met a
lot of interesting people who would provide me with an education I'd
have never gotten elsewhere. It was a fellow JWT cast member in 1997 who
told me about the theatre program at the University of Miami, which is
where I chose to attend college in 1999. I studied hard, played hard and
worked hard for 4 years in Miami and when it was all said and done, I
stopped off in Kentucky for 9 months to save money before heading to New
York City.
I went to New York City to be a
Broadway star (as you do), but after seeing the long audition lines that
often came with a fruitless return, I quickly decided that wouldn't be
the life for me, so I put my management degree to work and got a PR
& Marketing job on Broadway instead. That fantastic opportunity
eventually led to working for Roundabout Theatre Company and later Film Forum,
an art film house in SoHo. Living in New York was a great experience,
but when my soon-to-be fiance was transferred to the Cayman Islands, I
knew it was time to leave so I followed him to the sunny Caribbean where
we stayed for nearly 3 years.
 |
| Grand Cayman Island, 2008 |
I
was like a fish out of water in Cayman. I was fashion obsessed on an
island with very little shopping and afraid of the ocean (too much Shark
Week!) in a major dive destination. Aside from a few cover bands and a
community theatre, there wasn't much going on. It seems as though
everyone in Cayman is a stay-at-home mom, a lawyer, a banker or an
accountant so how does a country music-lovin Broadway girl fit in? Like
most other expats in the Cayman Islands, I went to work in the finance
industry. It was about 6 months after I arrived on the island when I saw
that some of friends from dance class in high school were blogging in
Kentucky and shortly after that, Pink Julep was
born in the Dunkin Donuts on 7 Mile Beach. I finally had something on
the island that I could create and get interested in, but it was also a
way that I could keep up with what was going on at home, not just in
Kentucky, but the entire USA.
After the first 2
years, we reached our expiration date in Cayman, After months of
planning, saving and applying for various visas, we packed everything we
owned into 14 bags and came to London with no jobs, no prospects, very
few contacts and a vacation rental apartment to stay in for 3 months. I
didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew it wasn't finance. While in
Cayman I did a lot of reading and became fascinated with lifestyle
brands, magazines and blogs, so I set out to find a way to incorporate
that into my new life abroad.
London
has proven to be a great choice! It's been a fantastic time to be here
with the Royal Wedding, Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics, not to mention
the ever-growing British fashion industry! I worked for a while at a
digital agency in the social media department and I'm now a freelance
content writer and social media consultant in addition to writing my
lifestyle blog Pink Julep full-time.
When I'm in need of inspiration, I always find myself looking to home
and the music of where I grew up. It's been more than 10 years since I
left home to go to University and it's exciting to see a lot of the
people I knew from home making names for themselves in the music
industry! If you find yourself in the Eastern Kentucky area, I'd
recommend checking out a show at Jenny Wiley Theatre, a visit to the Country Music Museum, or head to the Mountain Arts Center to see The Kentucky Opry or one of their other many entertainment offerings!
HerKentucky Business: Mellen Designs
Today, we're so excited to spotlight Mary Ellen Harden of Mellen Designs as our July HerKentucky Businesswoman. Mary Ellen's whimsical, iconic cards and gifts have a distinctively "Lexington" feel, with vibrant drawings of local landmarks, horsey themes, and bright colors. I first noticed Mary Ellen's work when she designed a custom character for Junior League of Lexington's Holly Day Market. Since then, I've found myself absolutely smitten with her work. The KY Lady Flat cards are just calling my name (juleps, horseshoes and silks? Yes, please!) and I'm simply obsessed with the Map Cards, the cutest and most unique way to tell a couple's story on a save-the date! -- HCW
Mary Ellen graciously agreed to answer our questions starting her business and about life in Lexington. We were thrilled to find that she's as lovely as her artwork!
Have you always lived in Kentucky?
Yes, I have
always lived in Lexington. I went to SCAPA for elementary and middle
school and graduated from Lafayette High School.
When did you start drawing/ designing?
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| Mellen Designs Horse Shoe Tray |
What made you decide to start your own business?
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| Save the Date map cards |
What do you wish someone had told you before you started MEllen Designs?
That there are a LOT
of stationery companies out there! Just a joke, but it does raise the
topic of comparison and competition. My business model is to do my best,
and stand out as myself - not to worry about the "others." I find as a
woman and in my business, comparison sneaks up. Although watching
industry trends is very important, comparison can make you lose sight
of yourself!
What advice do you have for women who want to start their own business?
I believe that if you are doing what you love and cannot imagine yourself doing
anything different you will achieve success. It is very hard work, not to be
brushed over, but if your heart is in it, the hard work is so very fulfilling.
Mary Ellen also answered a few fun get-to-know-you questions for us:
What is your favorite drink?
I
hold dearest my morning coffee with a bit of milk and sweetener, but
more exciting is an ice cold beer on a hot day at the lake!
What is your favorite spot in Lexington?
I'll
have to name a few - Merrick Inn for a celebratory dinner with my
husband, the Arboretum for a run with my dog, Keeneland with friends,
Old Cassidy Ave. where we are moving in a week, UK campus which brings
back so many great memories, Graeter's Ice Cream Parlor with a black
raspberry chocolate chip ice cream cone in hand!
Jeans or a skirt?
Definitely skirt! I can't ever get jeans to fit me right, I'm short!
Cats - always! We named our sweet beagle puppy, Cali after Coach Cal.
Summer or Winter?
Summer! Hot summer days lift my spirits and bring inspiration - of course, it's always harder to get to work in the summer!
For more Mellen, visit the company website and blog, or follow Mellen on Twitter and Facebook. For the remainder of July, Mary Ellen is running a 10% off offer for all online orders.
For more Mellen, visit the company website and blog, or follow Mellen on Twitter and Facebook. For the remainder of July, Mary Ellen is running a 10% off offer for all online orders.