Freeze-dried asparagus, bunny hop pasta and sweet potato pie for spring

From wildflower honey to cold brew coffee bags and cocktail sauce, here are 15 Southern-made products to try this month.

Freeze dried asparagus from Freeze Dried Groceries. (Courtesy of Jasmine Ludwick)

Freeze-dried asparagus

In Cumming, Greg Willis and his team are freeze-drying cauliflower, apples, pickles, all kinds of citrus, and our new favorite, asparagus. More than two dozen hefty spears (about 1 pound before freeze-drying) are a crunchy version of the best fresh asparagus you’ve ever eaten. The spears are pretty enough to sit in a jar on your counter and sturdy enough to swipe through creamy dips, but we’ve been eating them right out of the bag as a healthy, intensely flavorful snack.

$12 per ¾-ounce bag. Available at Dream Dinners or freezedriedgrocerystore.com.

Vampire killer garlic salt from Summa Salts. (Courtesy of Summa Salts/Elizabeth Anne Photography)

Vampire killer garlic salt

Vampire killer garlic salt from Summa Salts gets its punch from the slowly roasted fresh garlic and garlic chives grown by owner Sarah McElrea in her Jacksonville, Florida, garden. It’s a natural for garlic bread, but try it wherever garlic would be welcome: steaks, sauces, potatoes, eggs and popcorn. It comes in substantial glass grinders dispensing salt that’s just coarse enough to notice, but dissolves easily. The company makes more than two dozen herb- and pepper-infused salts and cocktail salts. We find they’re all worth trying.

$12 per 3-ounce grinder. Available at summasalts.com.

Carolina gold refrigerator pickles. (Courtesy of the Southern Sauce Co.)

Carolina gold refrigerator pickles

Jeff and Jennifer Heusing in Cumming started their business with barbecue sauce when Jeff made a few tweaks to his father-in-law’s recipe. Now the couple makes eight varieties of sauce and an amazing 19 varieties of refrigerator pickles. The pickles are hand-cut and hand-packed in their house-made brines. We’ve fallen for their Carolina gold pickles, sweet and tangy with a touch of their South Carolina-style mustard-based sauce. There’s a reason it’s one of their bestsellers.

$9 per 16-ounce jar. Available at the Dunwoody and Suwanee farmers markets and thesouthernsauceco.com.

Cold brew coffee bags

We love that cold brew coffee is generally smoother than coffee brewed with hot water and that we can make a big jar to enjoy over several days. Devin Hunter and Nick Lopez of Atlanta-based Coffee Man offer seven varieties of roasted coffee, but their cold brew coffee bags caught our eye. Devin steered us to one of their bestsellers called Flower Power, coffee infused with organic French lavender blossoms and organic vanilla. The resulting coffee is bright with a lavender finish that’s light but not overpowering. In fact, our taste testers didn’t recognize the herb; they just knew they really liked this blend. Each bag makes about 5 1/2 cups of delicious coffee.

$19.99 per 2-bag package. Available at drinkcoffeeman.com.

Bunny hop pasta. (Courtesy of Pastabilities)

Bunny hop pasta

Nashville-based Pastabilities began with a honeymoon trip to Italy that inspired Carey and John Aron to start a company making pasta in fun shapes like bunnies, hearts, and footballs, using a dough recipe that is higher in protein, lower in carbohydrates, and lower in calories. Now, 32 years later, they sell more than 80 pasta shapes, with new ones appearing all the time, as well as soup and chili mixes. Our taste testers loved the texture and thought the bunny hop pasta, made with durum wheat and colored with vegetable powders, was perfect for spring. Cat lovers, runners and pickleball players, they’ve got you covered, too.

$11.99 per 2-pack of 14-ounce bags. Available at worldofpastabilities.com.

Earth loose tea blend. (Courtesy of Elizabeth Ocheltree-Cho)

Earth loose tea blend

Elizabeth and Kwang Mae Ocheltree-Cho, founders of Decatur’s Woven Roots Collective, make seven blends of wellness-focused teas, including the one we’re enjoying this month, Earth. The name comes from the grounding properties of the organically grown herbs it contains, intended to settle the nervous system and support resilience: wood betony, catnip, skullcap, oat straw, and chamomile and lavender flowers. We found it calmed without making us drowsy. The 1-ounce canister will make at least 20 cups of tea.

$17 per 1-ounce canister. Available at wovenrootscollective.com.

Sweet potato pie from My Mom’s Sweet Potato Pie. (Courtesy of My Mom’s Sweet Potato Pie)

Sweet potato pie

Atlanta baker Sylvia Muwallif specializes in sweet potato pies. She named her business My Mom’s Sweet Potato Pie because her sons were always praising her pies to their friends. Our taste testers praised her pies as neither over-the-top sweet nor heavily spiced. That’s in keeping with Muwallif’s desire to promote the health benefits of sweet potatoes. Her pies are sold frozen and can be served cold, room temperature or warm.

$16 per 8-inch pie, $19 per 8-inch pie with pecans, $14 per 3 mini pies. Available at mymomssweetpotatopie.com.

Wildflower honey from Bee Haven. (Courtesy of Phillip Christopher)

Wildflower honey

Phillip Christopher of Bee Haven is a former agriculture teacher in Danielsville, Georgia, with a passion for beekeeping. He keeps up to 100 hives in 3 locations in the north Atlanta area, but harvests just one variety of raw honey — wildflower. Because the bees gather nectar from a variety of wildflowers, the lightly floral and fruity flavor will vary from batch to batch. It’s the versatile honey you need in your pantry, as good in a cup of tea as it is in your baking.

$10 per 8-ounce honey bear. $18 per 24-ounce jar. Available at beehaven.buzz.

Cocktail sauce from Zamm’s Cocktail Sauce. (Courtesy of Zamm’s Cocktail Sauce/New Beginin' Web Technologies)

Cocktail sauce

In landlocked Columbus, Georgia, Kelly McKinstry stirs up batches of Zamm’s cocktail sauce, named for her dad (whose recipe she uses) and conjuring memories of family Gulf vacations with every spoonful. There’s the original version we tried, with lots of horseradish and black pepper, a hot version and a Bloody Mary mix that adds vegetable juice to the cocktail sauce base. Serving cocktail sauce with oysters, shrimp and fish is traditional, of course, but we’ve been enjoying it mixed into coleslaw.

$12 per 12-ounce bottle of cocktail sauce. Available at zammscocktail.com.

Matcha almond and cashew butter. (Courtesy of Janet Sanders)

Matcha almond and cashew butter

Husband and wife Min Yoo and Janet Sanders of the Buttered Nut in Marietta produce a fun line of six nut butters that are anything but plain. All their flavors are an upgrade from the usual peanut or almond butter, and are great on toast, or stirred into oatmeal or yogurt. Lately, we’ve been loving their matcha nut butter. It’s a combination of dry-roasted almonds and cashews, sweetened with dates and coconut sugar and includes ceremonial-grade matcha.

$14.99 per 10-ounce jar. Available at thebutterednut.com.

Coffee benefiting the Fox Theatre from Jittery Joe’s. (Courtesy of Jittery Joe’s)

Coffee benefiting the Fox Theatre

Athens-based Jittery Joe’s Coffee just released Blue Sky Blend, a custom dark roast coffee. A portion of sales goes to the Fox Theatre’s philanthropic arm, Fox Gives. It’s a blend of beans from Nicaragua, Ethiopia and Guatemala, with chocolate and nut flavor notes. The can itself is sure to become a collectible for its depictions of the starry sky that lights up the Fox ceiling and the soaring minarets that top this Atlanta cultural landmark.

$21.99 per 12-ounce can. Available at jitteryjoes.com.

Citrus candle from Brick + Mortar. (Courtesy of Brick + Mortar/Kate Belle Photography)

Citrus-scented candle

Almost 10 years ago, David Kowalski, founder of Brick + Mortar on Howell Mill in west Midtown Atlanta, added a line of scented candles to the shop’s collection of home goods. In addition to making a lovely gift (or present for yourself), purchasing their candles also does good: the candles are made in partnership with City of Refuge by women transitioning out of crisis. Right now, we’re burning their citrus candle, a blend of grapefruit, orange, cardamom and ginger. It’s the aroma we need as we move toward spring.

$18 per 7-ounce candle. Available at Brick + Mortar, 1170 Howell Mill Road NW, Atlanta, Whole Foods, the Ballog, Ballard Designs and thisisbrickandmortar.com.

Date and nut energy bites from Joolies. (Courtesy of Joolies)

Date and nut energy bites

The Kohl family has been growing dates in California’s Coachella Valley region for nearly two decades. They sell whole dates and pitted dates, and use imperfect dates to make the date and nut energy bites they’ve named Joolies Date Pops. The three versions — brownie bite, lemon bar and cinnamon bun — pair naturally sweet dates with complementary flavors of chocolate, citrus and spice. The result is a quick snack that makes adding a little more fiber and minerals to your diet deliciously easy.

$5.99 per 3.5-ounce bag. Available at Target, Whole Foods and joolies.com.

Chocolate kahlua cake from the Organized Baker. (Courtesy of the Organized Baker/Tamara Gibson Photography)

Chocolate kahlua cake

Victoria Stutzer is the Organized Baker of St. Simons Island. She bakes custom cakes and organizes her clients’ kitchens and pantries. While she enjoys making customized layer cakes, her signature dessert is the chocolate kahlua cake we’ve been sharing with friends. This incredibly moist cake has deep chocolate flavor and undertones of coffee. It will keep up to 2 weeks on the counter or three weeks refrigerated. Our cake was consumed way before then.

$49 per cake. Order at theorganizedbaker.com.

Georgia-made ketchup from GPS. (Courtesy of Greg Savell)