Southern Living July 2021

SOUTHERNERS are known for their exaggerations, especially when it comes to food. Every time my father has a good dinner at a restaurant, he says, “That was the best meal I’ve ever had.” He makes this pronouncement with great sincerity, as if that one moment were the culinary highlight of his 80-plus years. My mother tends to be a little more specific, but she’s no less excited. “Well, I’ve just died and gone to heaven!” she’ll exclaim after a bite of leftover turkey gumbo, usually as she’s standing over the stove with a spoon. Or she’ll say, “I could live on nothing but tomato sandwiches for the rest of my life.” I probably inherited some of this enthusiasm, because I feel the same way about barbecue. Like thousands of other fans,…

WHAT WE’RE LOVING, SHARING, AND CELEBRATING Tangy Plum Pops Bring 2 ½ cups water, 2 cups chopped firm-ripe black or red plums, ⅔ cup granulated sugar, and ½ cup fresh blue-berries to a boil in a medium saucepan over medium-high. Reduce heat to medium. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until fruit is softened, 12 to 15 minutes. Transfer to a medium bowl, and chill until cooled slightly, about 20 minutes. Place plum mixture, 1 tsp. grated lime zest, and 2 Tbsp. fresh lime juice in a blender. Process until completely smooth, about 1 minute. Pour mixture evenly into 10 (3-oz.) ice-pop molds, and insert ice-pop sticks. Freeze until solid, about 4 hours. To serve, run the molds under warm water for a few seconds, and gently pull pops from molds. ACTIVE 20 MIN. - TOTAL…

WHEN ZAC WEST first moved to Jacksonville following a five-year stay in Tanzania, he quickly learned a secret to making friends in a new neighborhood: If you build it, they will come. While seeking a way to make his daughter, whom he and his wife had adopted overseas, comfortable in her new home, West noticed the towering oaks in his yard, rough-cut some wood, and strung up a pair of ho-hum tree swings. His daughter was thrilled, and she wasn’t the only one. “Everybody who came to our house—whether young children, older kids, or even adults—wanted to be on those swings,” he recalls. “They brought so much joy.” Fast-forward to 2020, when a pandemic kept many people at home and in need of a little happiness booster. To busy his hands…

LORI COULTER and Reshma Chattaram Chamberlin think that it’s time you felt comfortable and carefree in a bathing suit again. “We wanted to make swimwear for women like us,” says Lori, who launched Summersalt together with Reshma in 2017. Since then, their swimsuit-and-apparel brand has become known for its embrace of bright colors and its inclusive approach. “We hoped to inspire the joy, adventure, and fun we felt as children at the beach,” says Lori. “We wanted the brand to make you feel like you’re standing in the sun,” Reshma adds. This emphasis on light and positivity is something that saturates every element of the company, and it’s not just a sunny marketing trope. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Lori and Reshma were focused on more than the bottom…

Atlanta’s Coolest Mom-and-Pop Shop Vegan frozen-treat brand Mokipops is a fun family affair AMBER KHAN-ROBINSON wanted her three children to step away from the screens. “My husband and I posed a challenge to them, saying they needed to come up with something for the summer that didn’t involve electronic devices,” she recalls. The trio decided that they wanted to start a business, and choosing frozen pops as their product was easy. They already enjoyed making them for family and friends. At their first event in the summer of 2016, and with help from their parents, the budding entrepreneurs sold 85 of their all-natural goodies out of a cooler. Today, Mokipops is a bona fide business, with nearly 300,000 pops sold and plans to open a manufacturing facility this year. But more than…