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Carrot Juice Naturally sweet and vibrant in color, carrots are delicious in liquid form, and happen to make a great cocktail mixer. Our Carrot-Ginger Beer (pictured above) is a complex blend of cold-pressed carrot juice (make your own, or look for it in bottles in the produce section of the supermarket), spiced rum, brown sugar, ginger beer, mint and lime. Avoiding alcohol? Simply omit the rum and enjoy. Tomato Juice When you think of tomato juice, the bloody Mary is sure to come to mind....

The owner of a popular New Orleans music venue has transformed the space into a distribution center for free meals for those suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida. Howie Kaplan, the owner of The Howlin’ Wolf, told Billboard that they’re currently serving approximately 10,000 meals a day. “There wasn’t a grand plan to start the program,” Kaplan recalled. “Monday morning, we came in, we had a few drinks because we survived a hurricane, and we recognized right then and there that something was going on, but we didn’t understand the magnitude of it....

Gatlinburg, Tennessee, is a popular tourist destination year-round. But autumn—when the Great Smoky Mountains come alive with pops of orange and red and temperatures begin to dip—might just be our favorite. Halloween in Gatlinburg means more than hayrides and leaf peeping. It’s also a prime location for travelers who appreciate things that go bump in the night. It wasn’t too long ago that Gatlinburg was a rough frontier town, home to cannibals, family feuds that go back generations, and a healthy tradition of witchcraft....

A ponytail might be the most versatile and relied-upon hairstyle out there. The way that it can prance from the couch to the gym to the cookout to a black-tie wedding with minimal effort is impressive to say the least. Simple tweaks such as switching from a basic hair tie to a dressier alternative, or turning a casual loose ponytail into a chic nighttime look with the help of hairspray and bobby pins, make all the difference when it comes to making this rudimentary hairstyle fit all occasions....

Sometimes the simplest gestures can have the biggest impact. Take, for example, when the officiant at Christina Pacala’s brother’s wedding subtly incorporated American Sign Language into the ceremony. At first, the 34-year-old mom from Virginia couldn’t believe her eyes. “I was a bridesmaid and I started sobbing so hard when I realized he wasn’t just moving his hands—he was signing the word ‘family,’” Pacala recalled to Today. You see, Pacala’s 22-month-old daughter Riley, who served as her uncle’s flower girl, was born deaf....

My preferred water temperature for swimming here in Florida hovers around 85°F, but when winter rolls around, I suck it up and suck it in to shimmy into a 3mm wetsuit for an experience that’s unique to the Sunshine State: swimming with manatees. Crystal River, about 70 miles north of Tampa on Florida’s west coast, is one of the only places in the world—and the only place in Florida—where it’s legally permissible to swim with manatees....

A pair of wildfires near Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Sevier County, Tennessee caused the evacuation of roughly 11,000 homes and damage to at least 100 structures over the past couple of days. According to the Sevier County Fire Department, the blazes began Wednesday around 11 a.m., when the department dispatched mutual aid to a brushfire at 2862 Indigo Lane. This marked the beginnings of the Hatcher Mountain Fire, which would grow to cover 3,739 acres and affect more than 100 structures....

This month, we’ve all been spending plenty of time curled up on the couch re-watching our favorite summer movies. Among the bunch? 1987 classic, Dirty Dancing. Whether you’ve got “spaghetti arms” or not, we love the romance, the stellar dance moves, and the allure of a summer vacation in the Catskills. Of course, as many superfans know, the movie wasn’t actually filmed in New York’s majestic Catskill Mountains, but at The Mountain Lake Lodge in Pembroke, Virginia, and in Lake Lure, North Carolina....

Weeding and watering are my two least favorite gardening activities, especially in summer. Thorough mulching takes care of the first, but reducing the second also requires choosing the right plants. I prefer those that sip, not gulp. In fact, any plant that can’t go a week without me standing at the end of a hose will suffer a short and miserable life. Please understand, I am talking about plants that are growing in the ground, not containers....

Ever wondered why some of your plants die after one season, while others come back year after year? If you’ve pondered that, you’ve likely noticed the difference between two categories of plants: annuals and perennials. What Are Annual Flowers? Annuals live for only one season. For example: You plant them, they bloom in spring, summer, fall, or winter, and then they die. At that point, they must be removed and replaced....

Baking cookies for Santa, watching Christmas movies, and decorating the tree are all well-loved holiday traditions. But there’s one annual treat that many think is disappearing with each passing winter: the sending and receiving of Christmas cards. Who doesn’t love to flip through a stack of cards to see how much those neighborhood kids have grown? Plus, there are plenty of creative and beautiful ways to display them for holiday guests to enjoy....

After testing umpteen beauty products and honing a multi-step skincare routine so rigorous it could make Estée Lauder shake in her boots, a girl gets prone to boredom. Buzzy new launches offer a tingle of excitement that ultimately wears off, and tested favorites keep on delivering, as one would hope. So I thought to myself, how can I level up? What is Microneedling? So, what is microneedling? It’s a treatment, performed either at home or in the dermatologist’s office, that includes using a tool outfitted with hundreds of teeny-tiny needles to penetrate your outermost layer of skin....

Be still our Southern hearts! Blue Bell just released its peachiest ice cream flavor yet. Today, the Texas-based creamery announced the addition of Peachy Peach to its retail offerings. The new ice cream features a creamy peach ice cream with chunks of sweetened peaches. Our mouths are watering just thinking about it! “Avid Blue Bell fans may recognize Peachy Peach from their local ice cream parlor,” Carl Breed, general sales manager for Blue Bell, said in a press release....

What is Buttermilk? Dozens of iconic Southern recipes call for buttermilk, the incomparable cultured milk that lightens, tenderizes, marinates, flavors, and performs other works of kitchen magic. When buttermilk is at the heart of a recipe, should a cook turn to a substitute when the fridge is buttermilk-less? The answer is maybe, but only in a pinch. Buttermilk adds more than liquid to a recipe. It’s brimming with active cultures, similar to the good-for-us probiotics found in natural yogurt and sour cream....

When I was a kid, my Grandma would entertain the grandkids by making Play-Doh from scratch. She’d mix flour, water, salt, food coloring, and a few other items from the pantry, and it would magically become Play-Doh. It was fun to mold and sculpt and, at least according to my little brother, delicious to eat. He really shouldn’t have eaten it. Not just because we had all had our dirty hands all over it, but because it was made of raw flour....

The Christmas season always makes us nostalgic for holidays past. It also makes us want to spend more time with the people we love most. For moms across the South, this means planning some quality time with their daughters. Mothers and daughters share a special bond, and to celebrate that bond, we’ve put together a list of ideas for activities and experiences to inspire your time together this holiday season. It’s no surprise that plenty of these ideas involve time spent bonding, laughing, and learning from each other in the kitchen....

Spring has finally sprung, and so have beautiful flowers in so many Southern yards. From Lenten roses to daffodils, the first signs of warm weather bring so many colorful blooms. As you clip them, though, be careful to avoid the one mistake that is sure to shorten the lifespan of any arrangement: failing to keep it clean. Flowers are living things, after all, and with live plant matter comes bacteria. Get ahead of dirty stems, water, and containers that might wilt your blooms by following these tips....

We gardeners tend to be hard on ourselves. When a plant doesn’t perform as we expect, we almost always take the blame. What did I do wrong? Did I prune it too much? Did I prune it too little? Did I let it dry out? Did I drown it? Did I feed it too much? Did I forget to feed it? What the heck was I thinking? Right now in the Southeast, crepe myrtles have my readers in a tizzy....

This week, I’m talking to the legendary bluegrass musician Del McCoury. Del’s illustrious career began in 1963 when the “Father of Bluegrass,” Bill Monroe, asked him to join his band – and the rest is history. Almost 60 years later, Del is still playing shows, releasing albums, and performing with everyone from Vince Gill to Billy Strings. Today, we’ll talk about the return of DelFest, his latest album, Almost Proud, his hope for the future of bluegrass, and more....

As the winter season continues to sweep through the South, your main concern right now might be avoiding the typical beauty mistakes that could be ruining your skin. Though exfoliating weekly is definitely an important tip to keep in mind when temperatures drop below what we’re used to, one of the main things you may struggle with during those extremely cold times is whether or not you should be dripping your faucets when the temperature dips below freezing....