Weekend Foodie Warriors – Take 46!
Hello hello, again, Foodie Friends 🙂 Hope you had a great 4th of July weekend! For this edition of Foodie Adventures, check out our eats from our Saturday festivities, Making South Carolina’s famous “Bird Dogs”, and adventures in making homemade ice cream!
4th of July Festivities
Greenville, SC
We spent a very quiet 4th of July with Jamie’s family, compared to my family’s festivities of the past, with the entire extended family all in one place. Only a few were there on Saturday, as we were all trying to be very good about social distancing.
Jamie’s brother broke out the smoker again for these awesome 14-hour smoked BBQ’ed Boston butts, complete with grilled sausages and a ton of sides from the rest of the family that visited. Broccoli salad, potato salad, quick-pickled cucumbers, and coleslaw were some of the ones pictured below.
We also were tasked with making dessert, and if you saw our Instagram on Saturday, you got to check out this “Recipe Refresh” early! If you missed out, no worries, we’re going to break it down for you.
Our amazing Lucious Lemon Cake recipe got an upgrade with the cupcake sizes, same great filling, and an amazing lemon-raspberry glaze, topped with blueberries and luster dust ✨ (to make them a little more festive looking)! We call these our Red, White, and Blue cupcakes! My friends that we went to visit later on that evening cleaned us out of the second dozen we made, they were a smash hit with the raspberry frosting! 🧁
One of the first places that Jamie’s family took me to was this tiny little hole-in-the-wall restaurant they loved called Mac Smith’s (their link is above, go check them out!).
This restaurant, which originally started out as a gas station, turned into a butcher shop and country store, and eventually turned into the little restaurant known and loved by locals today. They’ve been in business for 75 years, and their signature country sausage is made from a 50-year-old family recipe, which can be bought and shipped to breakfast tables across the country!
Besides their sausages, what they’re really know for are their “Bird dogs”. This is one of those hyper-local regional favorites, to the point that if you tried to ask Google what it is, you’d find more pictures of German Shorthaired Pointers or ab exercises before you’d find out anything about this chicken-y delight.
Check out my Guy Fieri inspired rendition of me narrating the above, I had such fun with this! 🔥😁🙌
No one is really sure who created the first “Bird dog” or where the idea came from, but at Mac Smith’s it’s one of their most popular dishes in the menu! Starting with a toasted hot dog bun, line the bottom with cheddar cheese and a few slices of bacon. Next, make your own homemade honey mustard (totally worth it to make from scratch), add a couple chicken tenders, top with the honey mustard, and viola!
The recipe for our homemade version is here to make this classic South Carolina special, wherever you are!
Adventures in Ice Cream
Lake Norman, NC
Throwing it back to Father’s Day weekend for a minute! My uncle came down to visit us and hang out with my grandma (she’s 95 now, her birthday just recently passed!).
One of my favorite activities that we’ve done in the past with my uncle is make ice cream together. He has an old fashioned ice cream machine he breaks out every Christmas, when the whole family comes over to celebrate! It’s also a make-your-own pizza party too (if the thought of homemade ice cream sundaes wasn’t already enticing enough).
My mom knows I love experimenting with local produce when it comes to my food. When I brought home some South Carolina Peaches and strawberries from the farmer’s market, she had this great idea to make ice cream out of them – dairy free of course! 🤗
Cutting up fresh strawberries and peaches for the ice cream! 
Cutting up fresh strawberries and peaches for the ice cream! 
Our prep work – the strawberries, coconut milk, sugar, salt, and vanilla extract in the second bowl. 
Everything all together, waiting to go in the mixer! 
Pouring everything into the ice cream machine to be mixed and frozen.
We ended up using a recipe from Chocolate Covered Katie’s food blog (that link is in blue, check it out!), which we added the fresh chopped up peaches and strawberries to. Check out the slideshow above for the process, and the pics below for the finished product! 😋🍦💜
It was delish! If you’ve never tried ice cream made with coconut milk, I highly recommend it. 💜 What’s your favorite ice cream mix ins? Have you ever made ice cream at home? Let us know of some cool flavors we should try next. 😁
So how was your weekend Foodie Friends? What’s a hyper-local special dish your town is known for? Sound out in the comments below to let us know your suggestions of what dishes to make or places we should visit next. As always, feel free to like, comment, & share 🤗
