One thing is always true about Southerners: we are wildly passionate. Whether it's a favorite college town, restaurant,or beach (and the list goes on!), Southerners love to celebrate the people and places they love. This special collector's issue from the editors of Southern Living is a reminder of the spectacular sights, inspiring people, and cultural institutions that define our region. In Best of the South, we share the best-kept secrets and classic charms of forever favorites like Charleston, Asheville, Savannah, and more. We spotlight our round-ups of the South's best beaches, seafood joints, and scenic drives, to name a few. From cover to cover, this issue is filled with even more reasons to love the South.

Who doesn't love cake? There's perhaps no dessert that makes you feel more special. It's how we celebrate birthdays and graduations. It's the rarified treat at engagement parties and weddings-and the way we welcome old friends and new babies. Whether it's a cupcake with coffee at the neighbor's house or a three-layer slice at the end of an extravagant meal, cake is a sweet, simple indulgence that makes you feel loved and a little better about the world. And who knows more about cakes than Southern Living, the magazine that outdoes itself every year with new pedestal-topping cakes? Its trusted kitchens and pages have launched or popularized some of the South's-and America's-most iconic and decadent cakes, from Hummingbird Cake to Red Velvet Cupcakes.

Join ninth-generation Southerner Rebecca Lang as she serves up 150 fresh, from-scratch recipes and shares the beloved tables, serving pieces, and hospitality that make Southern meals such a pleasure. Personal essays put you at the table with notable Southerners-including HGTV Design Star judge Vern Yip, novelist Cassandra King, and Zac Brown, frontman of the two-time Grammy Award-winning Zac Brown Band.

An all-new revised and updated edition, The New Southern Living Garden Book is THE definitive source on gardening from the brand Southern gardeners have turned to for nearly 50 years. Completely redesigned and updated for the first time in 10 years, the new edition features over 1,700 beautiful color photographs and over 7,000 featured plants. Enhanced features include a monthly garden checklist, a Q&A section to tackle everyday problems, and garden design solutions, plus industry experts provide the hottest trends and tips combined with old-fashioned wisdom. From the new homeowner just starting out in gardening to the Master Class gardener, this book will be an essential resource.

The Ultimate Book of BBQ builds on the expertise of Southern Living magazine to create the definitive barbecue and outdoor grilling guide. The book features more than 200 of the highest-rated Southern Living recipes for barbecued meats and sides, plus pit-proven tips, techniques, and secrets for year-round smoking, grilling and barbecuing. With full color, step-by-step photos and mouthwatering recipes, this book includes everything the home cook needs to achieve first-rate backyard barbecue. Proven cooking techniques and equipment, expert advice from award-winning pitmasters, and a Rainy Day BBQ chapter with stovetop, oven, and slow-cooker options make this Southern Living's most definitive book on barbecue.

This new essential guide to entertaining is divided by occasion, offering a fresh lineup of menus and ideas from Oxford, Mississippi's go-to caterer for every celebratory scenario life serves up. In this update to the best-selling book of our mothers' and grandmothers' era, Elizabeth's tell-it-like-it-is voice provides a twist to the classic Southern advice that is a refresher for entertainers of any age or experience. Packed with delicious recipes from the original book like Smoked Salmon Canapes, Hot Cheese Squares, and Brandy Alexanders, the book also includes popular picks from the current pages of Southern Living as well as Elizabeth's treasured recipe box. The Southern Living Party Cookbook is an entertaining handbook loaded with lifestyle tips and hilarious Heiskell stories, along with lush photography to help you get the look from table setting to plated dish.

For the last 50 years, Southern Living magazine has reported on and photographed what makes the South so very unique and how it has evolved; it's distinct regions, its music, its homes, its gardens, its food, and most importantly, its people. Now, to mark its Golden Anniversary, Southern Living presents a gorgeous gift book that tells the true story of the South as only Southerners and Southern Living can tell it. Filled with evocative images, fascinating stories, revealing explorations, and time-honored recipes, Southern Living 50 Years is about how Southerners live, what they value, how they cook, how they welcome people into their homes. The book is divided into three sections: Journey South: A visual road trip through the South accompanied by thoughtful essays Welcome Home: A celebration of the Southern home including gardens, architecture, design, and indoor and outdoor living. The Southern Table: The South is famous for nothing if not its food. The book includes an exploration of the evolution of regional cuisine and includes 40 favorite recipes from Southern Living magazine with many additional recipes from renowned Southern chefs. Southern Living 50 Years reminds Southerners what makes their region and their lifestyle so special. And for non-Southerners, it serves as a fascinating guidebook and provides an authentic view of the distinctive culture of the South.

Southern food and food stories are bound together. This book will reflect people, regardless of where they come form, who claim Southern food as their own, whether for a lifetime or a mealtime. People feel deep affection for their local community cookbooks, especially those well-worn volumes that serve as a timestamp of a particular place and time. No other type of recipe collection is more generous, gracious, and welcoming. Before we give you a bite, we Southern cooks have to tell you about what we've made. Southern food is evocative, so our food and food stories are bound together in our communities. A memorable Southern cookbook holds good food and a good read, the equivalent of a brimming recipe box plus the scribbled notes and whispered secrets that cover the tips, advice, and stories that a generous cook shares with family members, friends, and neighbors. These recipes bring all sorts of cooks, recipes, and stories to a common table to bring readers a cookbook filled with good things to eat that have something to say.

“The one food book you must read this year." —Southern Living One of Christopher Kimball’s Six Favorite Books About Food A people’s history that reveals how Southerners shaped American culinary identity and how race relations impacted Southern food culture over six revolutionary decades Like great provincial dishes around the world, potlikker is a salvage food. During the antebellum era, slave owners ate the greens from the pot and set aside the leftover potlikker broth for the enslaved, unaware that the broth, not the greens, was nutrient rich. After slavery, potlikker sustained the working poor, both black and white. In the South of today, potlikker has taken on new meanings as chefs have reclaimed it. Potlikker is a quintessential Southern dish, and The Potlikker Papers is a people’s history of the modern South, told through its food. Beginning with the pivotal role cooks and waiters played in the civil rights movement, noted authority John T. Edge narrates the South’s fitful journey from a hive of racism to a hotbed of American immigration. He shows why working-class Southern food has become a vital driver of contemporary American cuisine. Food access was a battleground issue during the 1950s and 1960s. Ownership of culinary traditions has remained a central contention on the long march toward equality. The Potlikker Papers tracks pivotal moments in Southern history, from the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s to the rise of fast and convenience foods modeled on rural staples. Edge narrates the gentrification that gained traction in the restaurants of the 1980s and the artisanal renaissance that began to reconnect farmers and cooks in the 1990s. He reports as a newer South came into focus in the 2000s and 2010s, enriched by the arrival of immigrants from Mexico to Vietnam and many points in between. Along the way, Edge profiles extraordinary figures in Southern food, including Fannie Lou Hamer, Colonel Sanders, Mahalia Jackson, Edna Lewis, Paul Prudhomme, Craig Claiborne, and Sean Brock. Over the last three generations, wrenching changes have transformed the South. The Potlikker Papers tells the story of that dynamism—and reveals how Southern food has become a shared culinary language for the nation.

This go-to guide for the bride-to-be has everything she needs to make her big day memorable and special-checklists, schedules, guides, and, most of all, inspiration. Immediately after he pops the question, the planning begins full-speed ahead. Make it easy, memorable, and, most of all fun with the help of the Southern Living Wedding Planner and Keepsake. This beautiful, yet handy binder is the ultimate, comprehensive guide to planning the Southern wedding of your dreams. It covers every detail extensively-from the stationery to the flowers to the ceremony and reception. A lay-flat, concealed wire format and plenty of pockets make it easy to save and organize business cards, dress swatches, receipts and other essentials of wedding planning. Whether you're focused on staying within a tight budget, or if you want to splurge on the flowers, cake, reception, or the entire day, the Southern Living team has researched it and has a plan that will work for you. Of course, no wedding keepsake book would be complete without beautiful and inspirational photography, and Southern Living delivers like no other with over 100 full-color shots from real dream weddings across the South and over 200 images overall. Dozens of helpful ideas from our wedding experts help bring it all together with ease. Detailed plans and checklists from the experts at Southern Living make this book a must have to accomplish each activity before the big day.