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Summertime can get you in the mood to shake up your normal routine, and that includes shaking up new, exciting, refreshing cocktails that feel fitting for the season. There are sunset porch hangs, beach days, lakeside sits, and quality-time cookouts to be had, which provide many perfect opportunities to dust off your bartending skills and keep the house cocktails coming. While you can never, ever go wrong with an ice-cold, fizzy Texas Ranch Water, we’ve got another Southern sipper that you’ll love for summer....

You might not know it by name, but chances are you are familiar with the Holy Trinity of cooking if you’ve ever made a pot of gumbo. This backbone of Cajun and Creole cooking is essential for nailing the flavors and cuisine of Louisiana. It also has a rich history, connected to the different groups of people who settled in the region. Dive into the Holy Trinity with us—the simple, but important starting point for some of the South’s most iconic dishes....

No kitchen is complete without an arsenal of papers such as parchment paper, wax paper and aluminum foil, which each come in handy for a variety of applications in cooking and baking. If you’ve ever tried to swap one for the other and ended up with inedible results (wax paper for parchment for baking chocolate chip cookies? Never again.) it’s time to get schooled on exactly when to use each type of paper....

Spring brings blooming flowers, warmer days, and Easter celebrations. To mark the occasion, people head to church and organize family gatherings filled with good food and good fun. Specifically, Easter egg hunts! Little girls in their Easter dresses and boys in their Sunday best prowl around the garden or the house looking for hidden treasures. The history of transforming eggs into brightly colored gems isn’t a modern invention, though. In fact, decorating eggs is a tradition that dates back at least some 2,500 years....

Several state wildlife agencies are urging residents to take down their bird feeders as a mysterious illness continues to spread among songbirds. The illness was initially reported in late May in Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky. More recently, reports have come in from Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. Birds like common grackles, blue jays, European starlings, American robins, house sparrows, Carolina wrens, and other songbirds have been affected....

If you’ve struggled with red-tip photinias in your garden, you’re not alone. One season they look fine with their signature red-tipped leaves. The next year, after pruning, they look diseased with leaves covered with spots and holes, and few healthy ones. Now what? Can the shrub be saved with fungicide or fertilizer, or should you replace it? Here’s why red-tip photinias struggle in the South and what to plant instead....

On Saturday, 89-year-old Janice Matamoros and 82-year-old Otto Ewers said “I do” in front of their neighbors and friends at Belmont Village Senior Living Lakeway in Lakeway, Texas. It’s a day neither of them anticipated. But life, it seems, has its own plans. Community staff told KXAN that Matamoros and Ewers have been “inseparable” since they first met in the senior living facility’s weekly Bible study class two years ago....

Ah, sweet summertime. The season when our very happiness seems to hinge on the performance of our air conditioner. It’s true that we’ve come to expect a lot from home cooling systems. In fact, in many Southern states, people’s health relies on them. Considering how much we demand from our air conditioners, you’d think we’d do more to prioritize their maintenance. After all, a malfunctioning A/C unit is both physically and financially brutal....

When the package arrived at the family’s Magnolia, Delaware, house last week, they were shocked when they heard three knocks on their door and a woman screaming “abra cadabra.” By that point, 13-year-old Jacob had forgotten that he had written “knock on the door three times and scream ‘abra cadabra’ as loud as you can and run super-fast away” in the field intended for additional delivery instructions. “It was just the first thing that came to mind, and I thought it would be funny to hear someone say that,” Jacob told CNN....

It’s always ice cream season in the South. But with May upon us and temperatures creeping upwards, we all really need a cold, refreshing scoop or two after dinner, or whenever a craving strikes. That’s why we were so excited to see that Brenham, Texas-based Blue Bell Ice Cream is bringing back their Southern Blackberry Cobbler ice cream at grocery stores available now. “No need to add ice cream to this cobbler!...

It was a banner year for leatherback sea turtles in the Sunshine State! Wildlife experts were pleasantly surprised to report a record number of leatherback turtle nests found along South Florida beaches this year. According to the Sun Sentinel, the 79 nests laid by the turtles in Broward County this year is nearly double the previous record, which was 46 in 2012. The record low for leatherback nests in the county was 12 in 2017....

When you think of Carrie Underwood, it’s easy to say, “now there’s a woman who has it all figured out.” The Muskogee, Oklahoma native is a country icon and devoted wife and mother-of-two, who seems to exhibit grace in juggling it all. Did we mention she also manages to find time to run a clothing line, CALIA by Carrie Underwood, too? But like all of us, maintaining a sense of balance in life is no easy feat for Underwood....

Country superstar Dierks Bentley is once again wearing his heart on his sleeve with the release of his latest limited-edition charity T-shirt benefitting veterans and their families. For the third year in a row, Bentley has teamed up with lifestyle apparel company Flag & Anthem to release an exclusive Folds of Honor charity tee as part of his Desert Son clothing collection. The black T-shirt features Bentley’s signature “Riser” bird logo on a camouflage-print circle....

A young Dolly Parton fan battling stage 4 cancer was treated to a once-in-a-lifetime celebrity experience last week. On December 6, Magic Moments arranged for 19-year-old Katelyn Dill and her family to travel from their home in Cordova, Alabama, to Nashville to spend time with Parton at the country legend’s office. Parton sang, chatted, signed autographs, took photos, and doled out comforting hugs to her excited guests. For Dill, who is traveling to New York City for yet another surgery this week, meeting the American icon was a dream come true....

Who loves adorable animals? We Sure do. In fact, let us now take a few moments to appreciate how much cute pets have saved the day during these tough days of the coronavirus pandemic. There’s been Ellie the dog who stole our hearts fetching her owner’s meal from curbside pickup at Chick-fil-A at Carraway Village in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Then there’s this Instagram account dedicated to dogs working from home during the coronavirus crisis....

For anyone who has struggled with to find a recipe for pork chops that isn’t too dry, too boring, or too rich, Giada De Laurentiis is here to help. The Food Network personality teased her secret for light and flavorful pork chops on Instagram this week. The best part? It’s a simple sauce that comes together in just 15 minutes. “How to give pork chops a ton of flavor while keeping it light: pizzaiola sauce!...

Notice your dog lapping from his water bowl frequently, especially after exercise or in warm weather. That’s a good sign. Dogs, like people, are made up of about 80 percent water, and like us, they need to drink enough water to prevent dehydration, help their organs function well, and keep those cute noses moist. But how much water should your furry friend drink daily? “There is a calculation that you can do to figure out how much your dog should be drinking....

While you may follow a strict laundering routine for your sheets, towels, and other household linens that get everyday use, knowing when to wash blankets can be a bit more complicated. You may have blankets that are used as an extra layer between sheets and a comforter or duvet that will require a different schedule than the cozy blankets you use while watching Netflix at night and the pretty throws that act mostly as another element of layered decoration....

Hot, humid weather is enemy number one to makeup. No matter how well you apply foundation, eye shadow, and mascara in the morning, all it takes is a few minutes in the sun to melt away your look, blotching perfectly blended foundation and leaving traces of mascara underneath your eyes. While the only way to completely avoid this predicament is to stay indoors with an air conditioner nearby, that’s just not realistic when there are so many fun things to do in the summertime....

For most of us, fancy linens come out for the holidays and are then stowed away until the next year. Like clockwork, my grandmother pulls out her best linens for Thanksgiving and Christmas parties and by the time family has arrived, the tables stretching from our farmhouse’s front room to the dining room looks like a line of soldiers ready for their daily inspection. “I know it’s just family coming over, but we want to look sharp,” she says to me with a smirk, before returning to her overflowing to-do list for the holiday morning....