Kelly Sherrill, a.k.a. @flipflopgirl, followed us on Twitter, entered our Music to Your Mouth contest, and by "tweeting" her favorite southern supper, she won tickets to the Saturday Culinary Festival. Kelly deemed "Blue Crabs steamed in Old Bay, fresh corn on the cob, iced cold beer and homemade "nutty buddies" as her top meal.

We couldn't resist, so we requested the nutty buddies recipe and are sharing it here with y'all.

Good eatin' ...

HOMemade Nutty Buddies

Ingredients

Breyers All Natural Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream

1 lb good Dark Chocolate (any brand will work)

¼ cup Half & Half

 1 cup Salted Peanuts, coarsely chopped

Sugar Cones

Directions

Begin by clearing a spot in your freezer to place a half sheet pan, lined with parchment paper.

Place one large scoop of ice cream on a sugar cone and immediately add it to the pan in the freezer, do this until all cones are in the freezer. You can lay them on their side or stand them up whatever works best in your freezer. Let them harden in the freezer for at least an hour.

Next, melt the chocolate in a metal or glass bowl over a pan of gently boiling water, slowly add the half and half to the melted chocolate until smooth and completely incorporated. Turn the water under the chocolate down to keep the chocolate warm.

Place the peanuts on a shallow plate beside the chocolate pan.

Now for the messy part - Removing only one cone at a time from the freezer, quickly dip and coat in the warm chocolate and roll or sprinkle with the chopped peanuts and immediately replace in the freezer. Repeat these steps until all are covered and back in the freezer. Freeze on the pan for another hour and then you can place each in a plastic sandwich bag and store in the freezer.

They will be slightly irregular in shape which is what makes them special and definitely homemade. They have been a hit with my family and I certainly hope they will be with yours. Enjoy!

Recipe courtesy of Kelly Sherrill, “Best Southern Supper“ Contest Winner, 2011

Wow. Time flies when you are having fun, or recovering from the 2010 Music to Your Mouth festivities. No rest for the weary here, as we immediately dove into the details once the 2010 events wrapped.

We kicked off 2011 with a full (and impressive) wine dinner series, and our monthly Buffalo's wine dinners.

Today, we kick off the Festival-related antics. Come November 14th, we'll embark on the 16-event 5th Annual Music to Your Mouth Culinary Festival. We've gathered the best tastes, tunes, and tonics in the south and we're looking forward to sharing all that we are cookin' up with you.

That's right, with YOU! So, hit the events page and check out all that we have planned. We look forward to seeing you in November.

Our 10-day "Dish Your Dish" contest concluded on Friday. The team selected an entry at random, and together we unveil the winner ...

Dish Your Dish Announcement from Courtney Hampson on Vimeo.

Winner Lee Fogel described his favorite southern dish like this: 
There was a little restaurant called The Bakery on King Street in Charleston S.C.. I remember going every morning for breakfast and had these absolutley fabulous low country crab cake eggs benedict.....OMG!!!! In a word....well you just can't say it in a word!! I have never had anything that wonderful since....I miss that little place!!

A frozen buffet. No power. Non-flushing toilets. A rogue sprinkler system. This month in CH2 magazine, we share some of the hilarious and stressful stories behind the scenes at Music to Your Mouth, and let you get to know the Music to Your Mouth team a little better. Check out the full story here ...

One of the hot trends in the wine world is wine on tap or out of a keg. It is practically unheard of on this side of the country but some are starting to see the light because of the many benefits. Wine from kegs is more efficient than bottled wine because there is no waste and it keeps some wines fresher. There are also the numerous eco-friendly aspects to take into consideration. Once the stainless steel keg is used it can be refilled by the winery and used again. There is no longer a need for labels, bottles, boxes, corks or capsules. The shipping costs are less as well because a five gallon keg which holds 25 bottles of wine or over two cases weighs approximately 50 pounds while the average 12 bottle case of wine weighs 30 - 35 pounds per case. 

I recently installed a small brewmaster tap tower behind the bar of our flagship restaurant, The River House. The brewmaster had to be upgraded to become a winemaster because wine kegs are not exactly the same as beer kegs. I changed out the taps to stainless steel taps and changed the gas from CO2 to Nitrogen so we wouldn't have sparkling sauvignon blanc. I also added a line to the outside of the system to give us the ability to pour a red wine on tap as well. 

The man responsible for inspiring this recent addition to the Inn at Palmetto Bluff is the always charming Dan Donahoe of Teira Wines and his keg wine business called Silver Tap. Dan is joining us at Music To Your Mouth for the first time this November. He will be pouring wines from keg and bottle; I challenge you to tell the difference. We will soon be adding two other wines to the Wine Tower. Our good friend and frequent visitor Dave Miner of Miner Family Vineyards in the Napa Valley has agreed to keg his most recent vintage of Chardonnay for our system. Lastly, we are adding an Anderson Valley Pinot Noir from one of Palmetto Bluff's favorite wineries, Lioco Wines. 

Join us prior to the Music To Your Mouth food and wine festival for a taste from the tap, the River House is open nightly. 

Music to Your Mouth Guest Chef Sean Brock of McCrady's Restaurant in Charleston talks southern cooking on SCETV's "The Big Picture."

The show tackles the question ... has Charleston become the new southern food capitol of the United States?  Three of the last five years, the James Beard Award for best chef in the Southeast has hailed from the Holy City. The Big Picture travels to the coast to talk - and eat with - the experts.

Watch the show online

Winemaker Ehren Jordan will return to the Bluff Easter Weekend for two fun-filled dinners as a part of the Turley & Failla Wine Weekend. Take a look at this clip, Chasing Ehren. He's a true man on the move!

 Also making his return next month is Chef Anthony Hoy Fong. Anthony has spent the last four years cooking across America with Food Network star Tyler Florence (so, if you've been to the Music to Your Mouth Festival in November, you've certainly met him!) and currently consults on Bravo's hit cooking show, Top Chef. 

We are really excited about the return of these two artists, and anxious to see what they are cooking up!

Part deux of day two started with a to-go sandwich in the small town of Occidental. We then traveled to the coast to dine where the Russian River meets the Pacific Ocean which was breathtaking. My picture cannot capture the beauty but attention still must be paid. 

After lunch we traveled through the twists and turns of the Sonoma Coast roads and above the cloud line to Hirsch Vineyards. The saying "as the crow flies" has never meant more to me; a five minute flight easily equals an hour drive. On a side note, as the crow flies, was the most commonly spoken phrase on our trip. It is a common descriptor of distance in California and appropriately so because you can see for miles but nothing is that easy for those of us traveling by foot or car. 

 At Hirsch we were greeted by David Hirsch who founded and planted the vineyard in 1980 to premium pinot noir. His background was in clothing sales but you would never know that today because there is no doubt that he is a farmer. David attributes the multiple terroirs of his vineyards to the grinding and gradual movement of the North American and Pacific Plates and the San Andreas Fault which lies beneath the vineyards. Each vineyard block has a different soil content which adds a very distinctive quality to the wines. The soils are a mixture of sandstone, heavy clay, sandy loam and clay loam that are scattered with a panoply of rocks varying in origin from igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary shale. The Hirsch website is a great source of information about their terroir and the Sonoma Coast.

We proceeded to the barrel room and tasted from fourteen different barrels of pinot noir. The 2008 vintage was smoky due to the fires in California. The barrels flavors ranged from smoked bacon to the beautiful clean fruit of a Chambolle Musigny. After tasting I selected four different blends based on the barrels we tasted. I wanted to create a wine that was predominately bright gorgeous fruit but still had a little of that vintage specific smoke. I have a feeling that regardless of my choice the wine still would have been kickin' good due to the quality of their juice. After tasting through all of the blends the one that appealed to me most was a blend of two barrels. There was a sweetness to the fruit, a silky-sexy texture and a little earthy smoke on the finish. After blending and bottling there will be fifty cases of Palmetto Bluff's first pinot noir called "Legacy".

A special thanks to David, Jasmine and Tess at Hirsch.

Today starts the second event of the 2010 Wine Dinner Series. This weekend we will celebrate the Lowcountry's culinary heritage with David Adelsheim of Adelsheim Vineyard.

When I moved to the south almost three years ago it wasn't for the heritage or the food. I didn't know there was more to it than biscuits and gravy and okra. The only thing that I had ever really eaten was frozen fried okra and some grits that my New England Grandmother attempted to appease my Southern Step-Grandfather. But after listening to my boss wax poetically on the wonders of Southern food, for a long time I might add, I eventually started to listen and realized that there was a whole world of food here and some fantastic stories to tell. Pair all of that heritage of food with a rip roaring glass of wine and presto, I found a whole new way of looking at the South.

As Sommelier, and the "Wine Geek Party Planner" of Palmetto Bluff,  I work to devise new and innovative ways to intoxicate our guests. Between the planning and execution of our year-long wine dinner series and week-long food festival my glass and plate are always full - I'm creating new and innovative ways for you to experience the tastes, sights and sounds of epicurean world.

My blog entries will be a fun look at my world through the often hazy lens of my wine glass.