Reviews For Southern Living Magazine


Southern Living

Southern Living is great for recipes,interior decorating and crafts- I also like to learn about other parts of the country

Long time reader of Southern Living

Is there anyone out there living in the south who hasn't read a Southern Living magazine? Well I declare, shame on you. All kidding aside, Southern Living is living southern with good taste, good food and good ideas (isn't that how us southern people want to be known of anyway?) I love this magazine. There are so many old issues that I can't bear to part with that I now have boxes for them. Something else I can say about this magazine - you can pick up an old issue and most of it will still be up to date as far as great recipes, entertaining tips, gardening,crafts and places to travel to,unless a hurricane has blown it away. Best enjoyed on a front porch swing while sipping on a sweet tea or is that a mint julep?

I Love Southern Living

I have been a subscriber to Southern Living for approximately twenty years and it is my favorite magazine.

Lois Howell

Southern Living Magazine

This is one of the BEST magazine for women in today's market.I look forward every month with anticipation for my new copy.From "looking & Feeling Great" articles, to "Travel" to my favorite section section "THE RECIPES" (which by the way are true and tested on their own kitchen) I think that if I could only by one magazine, it would have to be this one!

Southern Living

What a classy magazine and the price was excellent for such a top rated publication

Love my Southern Living!!

I have been a Southern Living subscriber for several years, so I wanted to bless one of my daughter-in-laws with a subscription as well. Full of great recipes and gardening tips!

subscription renewal

i have read southern living for years and the chance to get it at such a reduced rate was an excellent opportunity!!!!!!

Great for a Gift!

I gave this as a gift for Christmas for my mother in law. She loves the magazine.

Civilized Life Just Does Not Exist North of the Mason-Dixon Line...

Not a day goes by that I'm not thankful to be a southerner, and I thank my lucky stars that I've got a magazine like Southern Living to help hone my gracious living skills. It took quite a few issues of those fat 200 page issues before I realized just how truly inadequate my southern education really was, even though I spent my childhood watching every known episode of both Andy Griffith and Dukes of Hazard. I'd even seen Deliverance, and read a few Grisham novels.

What more could there be to know about living in the South?

Plenty as it turns out, and every issue of Southern Living is there to bring it all home.

Whenever an issue shows up in my mailbox, I just settle back in my rocker out on the front porch, with a tall cool pitcher of Mint Juleps, and read my fill of ideas for gardening like a southerner, decorating my home like a southerner, eating and drinking like a southerner, and visiting places in the south (Lord knows we wouldn't to visit any foreign destinations, like Chicago or Philadelphia --- those folks just can't even talk right, much less make a decent peach cobbler.)

Gardening, cooking, traveling....those are pretty much the cornerstones of any issue of Southern Living. Sure, they'll occasionally lob a decorating idea or two at you, but it will be more along the lines of ideas for decorating your plantation home than ideas for using inoperative motor vehicles as lawn ornaments (that's a different kind of "southern living"!)


Southern Gardening...
Gardening is a popular pasttime in the south, but just because you can't tell a lily from a rosebud doesn't mean you have to have a black thumb all your life. Personally, I think all those articles about growing the perfect flowerbed are more for southern women like Aunt Bea than southern women like Daisy Duke, but that's okay, every now and then a good gardening article comes along that really fires my imagination.

A few months back, there was one about growing practical herb beds. I like having some fresh cilantro for my salsas, and I don't think there has been born the southern gentleman who can't think of a few uses for a nice lush green bed of mint. Just the thought of all that mint growing in my garden makes me want a refill on that tall cool glass of mint julep. (We dignified southern gentlemen drink a lot of mint juleps.)


Southern Cooking...
I don't know what folks eat up there in that frozen tundra on the other side of the Mason-Dixon line, but I do know that the eatin' is mighty fine when you're on the right side of the line. My mouth waters at the thought of a good Carolina pulled pig barbecue sandwich, some collard greens, and big thick slice of Georgia pecan pie!

Of course Southern Living publishes plenty of recipes for all these things, and their annual cookbooks line the shelves of any decent southerner's kitchen. It never ceases to amaze me just how many ways there can be to fix a nice sweet potato pie!

In fact, I do believe that there are more recipes in a single issue of Southern Living magazine than in a years worth of Gourmet or any other fancy-shmancy Yankee style food magazine. I might be exaggerating just a tad bit, or I might be just talkin' about recipes for food that's actually worth eating.

And I think we all know that the only kinds of food worth eating are the kinds that come from the south. You've got your barbecue, your cajun and creole type foods, and your good, down-to-earth down-home soul food. Some folks might consider tex-mex to be a southern food, and that's okay with me, just don't go getting too far west because I know that no genuine southerner wants to eat that effeminate California style stuff with all its veggies and tofu and sushi and what have you. No sirree! Not when you could be boiling crawdads down on the bayou and maybe fixing up a big pot of jambalaya! Good food...that's the spirit of the south.

Every issue is peppered with great articles about honest down-home southern cooking. I just loved that article they ran a couple months ago about ways to make spoonbread. Fresh hot spoonbread, topped off with a dollop of rich creamery butter, or maybe even some hot bacon drippings and cracked black pepper....mmmm, mmmm, good!

Eating wouldn't be dining without good drinks to go with the good food. The editors at Southern Living know this, and they regularly publish good southern drink recipes. Where do you think I get my mint julep recipes? From Mr. Boston? Not on the grave of General Robert E. Lee!

Unfortunately, telling a southerner that you know the "right" way to make mint julep is a sure invitation to a duel with pistols at dawn. Fact is that there are as many ideas of the "right" way to make a mint julep as there are pickup trucks with Georgia plates sporting gun racks and confederate flags waving from their radio aerials.

Some folks have historically felt that the flavor emphasis should be squarely on the bourbon, with slightly crushed fresh mint sprigs left floating on top the drink to give it more of an aromatic mintiness than a real mint flavor. Other folks feel that abusively minty flavor is a requirement of the drink, and that you have to make a mint syrup, or at least crush the mint leaves into the sugar, like a Cuban does when making a mojito.

Am I gonna tell you the right way? Hell no! Thems would be fightin' words where I come from!

But I will tell you that a mint julep is definitely one gracious kind of southern drink, no matter what kind of julep it is that you're getting! Makes a man just want to jump down, turn around, and pick a bale of cotton! Oh Lordy!


Southern Traveling...
This magazine emphasizes just about every aspect there is to the south, and of course, the whole sense of place is an important part of that.

The southern states have boo-coo good places to visit, from the best beaches in America (like the Outer Banks of the Carolina coast), wonderfully rugged mountain retreats through the Appalachians, to dignified, traditional small towns that still have that same kind of warmth and friendliness that northerners saw in Mayberry back in the Andy Griffith days. (Mayberry is actually supposed to be Mount Airy North Carolina --- wonder if I'd get a parking ticket from Barney Fife if I go visit...might be worth it for a slice of Aunt Bea's fresh baked pie).

I think I might just have to visit Mount Airy one day. I do know that the rolling Appalachian foothills are a beautiful place to visit, and the town isn't far from the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is unquestionably one of the south's greatest drives.

The south has a lot of great drives though, if you were thinking of taking a family trip this summer. I might do a trip along the coast. I might do one through the mountains. I might even do one along the historic Natchez Trace parkway, cutting all the way through the heart of Mississippi.

And speaking of Mississippi, I am just going to have to do me a trip one of these days to the town of Oxford. I can blame John Grisham for painting images of bucolic small towns in my head, but the articles I've read about Oxford make me think it would be a fine place to experience some genuine southern travel hospitality.

I love to travel, and there's so many interesting places to see throughout the south, that I just can't imagine the travel editors at Southern Living ever running out of interesting spins to put on articles about fascinating places. So much history. So much culture. So much to say...


Southern Bottom Line...
Well, my pitcher of mint juleps is running a bit low, and the sun is setting on this beautiful southern day, and so I'll leave you with just one thought: if you have any inclination at all towards gracious living, then this is a magazine you'll definitely enjoy. Gardening, home decorating, traveling, cooking, eating, dining, you name it, if there's an aspect to American life, there's a southern spin on it, and it will be a gentle, gracious, zesty kind of spin, and you can read about it in Southern Living.







Recommended:
Yes

Exploring Southern Style

The term ?southern living? brings visions of old, tree-lined drives, hanging heavy in Spanish moss, leading to the main house with its wrap-around porch and nearby gazebo.

But the magazine ?Southern Living? breaks free of the misconceptions of plantations, Rhett Butler and Scarlett O?Hara ... and brings true Southern Living to life.

With articles ranging from travel, to cooking, to gardens, to decor, and with well-conceived, well-placed ads that complement, rather than detract, from the articles, Southern Living offers advice, ideas and inspirations for exploring the world around you and finding your own bit of ?southern comfort? wherever you might live.

Whether discovering new vacation destinations, gardening tips, suggestions on new books to read or recipes to try, or just touring the homes featured between the covers, Southern Living helps you to slow down, take a look around you and consider the ways to bring the Southern style to your own ?neck-of-the-woods.?

And, there?s never anything pretentious or out-of-reach ... it is all about enjoying life to the fullest in ways that please you most. It isn?t a magazine about the ?must-do?s? or ?must-have?s? but more about what makes you happy within the environment around you.

So, sit down, relax and escape with Southern Living.



Recommended:
Yes

Menu