Cheeseburgers In Paradise

My husband came home from work last week with a recipe that he'd like to make for our tailgating at the Jimmy Buffett concert over Labor Day Weekend.  It was a really 'cute' idea.  We bought the needed ingredients and went to work.

Jimmy Buffett @ Hershey, PA concert on 8/30/2014

Here's what we came up with and a few changes we made that we found might make assembly easier.

You'll need:

icing - vanilla & add coloring yourself or buy pre-colored in a tube
Nilla Waffers or generic brand
Thin Mints or generic brand (can also use small York Peppermint Patties)
coconut - you'll need to add green food coloring

A cookie sheet
a sandwich bag
spreader/knife

Yeild:  about 30


Now to the knitty gritty....

since this was our first attempt at making these little "cheeseburgers" here's what we did.  We bought a container of vanilla icing, took half of the container & colored with yellow food coloring  for our cheese.  I used about 8 drops of yellow to get my desired color of cheese.  Start with 3-4 drops and add to your liking for color.  Then I set aside.

My husband took care of the lettuce (coconut).  Put about 1 cup into a sandwich bag, add several drops of green food coloring.  You'll want to have some air in the bag so you can shake it.  You'll also need to do some kneading of the bag too, to get the food coloring spread throughout evenly.  We found that we had to add a bit more coconut to get the desired color we wanted.

We used a cookie sheet to lay out our buns (Vanilla wafers).  We put the curved side to the cookie sheet.  My husband wanted round buns ;)  If you want them to stay put & not slide around as much, place the flat side to the cookie sheet.

You'll need a small dollop of icing on the cookie to hold the mint cookie or peppermint pattie in place.  Then place a larger dollop of yellow icing on top of that for your slice of cheese.  Then you'll need a pinch of lettuce on each one... this is where you need to use the cookie sheet it keeps the mess contained from the 'lettuce' and easy clean up to reuse what drops.

 

Then you can add some red icing for the Heinz 57 or slice of tomato as it goes in the song...

this will be enough icing then to also hold your top of the bun on the sandwich.

YUM!  Enjoy everyone.

We found that having a tube of icing or bakers bag would make assembly easier than using a knife to spread the icing...either way they are delicious!!

Fair Week

The fair events began last Saturday, that was when my husband, father & brother hauled all of the antique tractors to the fair grounds to begin set up for opening on Monday.  Monday evening was spent entering all of our domestic exhibits, Tuesday evening was a LONG overdue date night for my husband & I, and Wednesday evening was a whole family affair (4 generations) at the antique tractor games.  Saturday evening will be the fireworks and picking up the domestic exhibits and Sunday will be the tractors making their way back home.  Here is a link to some of the photos from this week.  I'll update later with more photos.

ENJOY!

Fair 2014 photos

Our Servicemen and Servicewomen

I updated my page banner today for many reasons.  I have a brother in the Army National Guard who will be deployed overseas next month and with the recent events in Israel, Gaza, Iraq, and the Ukraine and many other places around the world my thoughts are with ALL the families being effected by these turbulent times in our world.  My prayers are with all our troop around the world service for our Nation.  I placed a yellow ribbon on my banner so that everyone who visits my blog will know I support our armed forces.  I am also asking my visitors for continued prayers to bring them all home safely to their loved ones.  Thanks everyone - I know that I have a wonderful group of followers who will comply with my request.  Thanks in advance.

Vacation Fav's

I'm now back from vacation for almost a week.  I have managed to purge over 500 photos down to my favorite dozen or so photograph's.  It was a rainy muggy week of vacation, although it was cool.  The overnight lows were in the mid 40's.  So for a few days the heat in the cabin was on as the daytime high's were about 62 degrees F.

I hope that you'll enjoy the wildlife as much as I did.  Here are some of my favorites:

 This place was beautiful!  Seeing the white bark of the birch trees emerging from the lush green of the rest of the woods...just gorgeous in the morning light.

This was in the wild area about an hour from where we stayed.  The wildflowers were so pretty, I just had to get a few shots of them.

 

 This is where we spent our week of vacation; we rented one of the 'modern' cabins.  It was actually a very nice cabin.  Most of the comforts of home.  No A/C, TV, or internet/cell signal.  Extremely quiet and no light pollution!

 

 

 I never saw lily pads that stood straight up out of the water like these are doing.

The lake is not as my husband & I remembered it (from 18 years ago) it has become full of lily pads and other bog type plants that make navigating most of the lake extremely difficult.  With a canoe or kayak it's not too bad of a time.  The lake is known for being the southernmost example of a Canadian Peat Bog.  Because of all the tannins in the water things do not decay because bacteria is unable to grow here.  I love the reflection of the sky on the black waters of the lake.

 This stump caught my eye as it reminded me of 3 deer heads looking in all directions.  It was just very cool looking.

I think these next few of the lily pads are my most favorite ones.  I love the flowers.  They were so pink, but the photos just don't show their beauty.

I also captured a few of the wildlife among the lake...I had some company in the canoe (a ladybug), while I watched the damselfly and water skippers. A walk on the shoreline revealed some old evidence that Beavers had been there.  Once back in the canoe, we found the Beaver's hut and were able to get within 30 feet of a Blue Heron.

 

 

 

Then the entire reason my husband wanted to return here was for the delicious blueberries, however the harvest this year was not very good.  Instead of 10's of gallons of blueberries we were lucky enough to harvest 3 gallons.

Creative Memories U.S. & Canada to close it's doors.

http://www.scrapbookupdate.com/2014/08/04/ahni-zoe-creative-memories-closing/


Please follow the above link for the whole story.  While this news does not come as a surprise to me; it's still very SAD news indeed.

For those of you who loved CM's products I have been researching alternatives and do have many choices available for you should you need something.  I urge you to contact me with your needs and hopefully I can help you find a replacement.

Thanks for your loyalty over the years.