Marble Mountain Family Day

Lining up to buy tickets for the duck race.

Every summer as part of the Marble Mountain Festival,  Family Day is celebrated on a Sunday afternoon down on the waterfront and beach.  It's always fun and a chance to catch up with friends. There are lots of activities for kids and anyone who is young at heart.  Iris does the face painting. Burst a balloon with a dart and win a prize.  Toss the roll of toilet paper into the potty and win another prize. ( I tossed all three rolls and won a prize.). Buy a rubber ducky for the duck race ( In 2013 my duck won $50 for me.).

My duck number 4 won the race in 2013.

Face painting by Iris.

I got all three rolls in the potty. 

I'm waiting to burst balloons with darts.

Blake having a round of golf.

Wendy's  little grandson Blake was having fun playing golf.

There's music and hot dogs and ice cream.

Linda is busy selling hot dogs.

Folks out here know how to have fun the old-fashioned way, and I love it. 

Peach Melba Dessert

Peaches from Jeanette

My friend Jeanette, a native of Australia, gave me a bounty of beautiful peaches from the Farmer's Market for my birthday.  Since the Peach Melba dessert was named for an Australian opera singer Nellie Melba*, I decided the perfect way to use a few of these peaches was to make Peach Melba dessert.

Recipe for three desserts:

3 whole fresh peaches
vanilla ice cream
raspberries (or in my case I had on hand some raspberry seedless jam)
sliced almonds (optional)

1.  Poach peaches in simmering (not boiling)  water to soften and make removal of the skin easy.

Poach peaches in simmering (not boiling) water.

2.  Remove skin and plunge peaches in ice water to cool rapidly.

Peach halves in ice water to cool.

 3.  Prepare raspberry sauce.  I heated the raspberry seedless jam just enough to liquefy.  If you are using fresh raspberries, cook about 2 cups of raspberries in a cup of sugar.  Strain the cooked raspberries to remove the seeds and use the raspberry syrup to drizzle over the ice cream and peaches.

I used raspberry jam instead of raspberries because this is what I had on hand.

Peach halves and raspberry syrup ready.

 4. Put a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a dessert dish.  Add two peach halves and drizzle with raspberry syrup.  And there you have it---Peach Melba Dessert.

Peach Melba Dessert ready to enjoy.

 *  If you are interested in reading about the history of this dessert you can check out this link.

Blueberry-Lemon-Sour Cream Squares

Wild Blueberry Lemon Squares

One of the nice things about being at Marble Mountain in August is it is the peak of wild blueberry season, and this year there was a bumper crop.  There are fields of wild blueberries near our place and friend Beverly went blueberry picking with our neighbor Maggie.  She brought home almost a quart of berries.

Beverly's wild blueberries.

I decided it was time I did some baking.  Having the blueberries, a lemon, and some sour cream on hand, I googled a recipe using these three ingredients.  Blueberry-lemon-sourcream bars fit the bill.  I enlisted the help of Rufus (introduced him to home baking.)

Blueberry-lemon-sourcream Bars

Ingredients:

Crust

• ½ c butter, melted and cooled to room temperature
• ½ c light brown sugar
• 1½ cup all purpose flour
• ½ tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp baking powder
• ¼ tsp salt

I didn't have the ingredients for making the crust, but I did have a ready made graham cracker crust.  I crumbled this and had Rufus add melted butter until all the butter was incorporated.

Mixing melted butter with crushed graham cracker crust.

Graham cracker-butter mixture pressed into bottom of parchment lined pan.

• Filling:
• 2 cups fresh blueberries
• ¾ cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons cornstarch
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• ½ c sour cream
• ¼ cup granulated sugar
• 1 Tbsp all purpose flour
• 1 egg
• ½ tsp vanilla extract

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 375 and prepare an 8×8 square pan by lining with parchment paper and spraying with cooking spray.
2. Make the crust by whisking together in a medium bowl the flour, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add the melted butter. The dough will be crumbly but make sure all of the butter is incorporated.
3. Reserve ¾ cup of the crust and press the remaining into the bottom of your 8×8 prepared baking pan.
4. Combine the fresh blueberries, sugar, cornstarch, and lemon juice in a small bowl until the combined and set aside. 

   

   Mixing blueberries with sugar, corn starch and lemon juice.

5. For the sour cream filling, mix together in a large bowl the sour cream, sugar, 1 Tbsp flour, egg, and vanilla. Pour over the crust in your 8×8 pan.

   

   Sour cream mixture poured over bottom crust

6. Spoon the fresh blueberry mixture evenly over the sour cream.

   

   Blueberry mixture spread over sour cream mixture.

7. Sprinkle your reserved ¾ cup crust over the top and bake for 25-28 minutes or until golden brown. 

   

   Ready for the oven.

8. Cool completely and serve in squares. 

   

   Blueberry square served with vanilla ice cream.

   This can be stored in the refrigerator.  With Rufus helping this took only minutes to prepare and we had dessert for several meals. 

Dinner At Marble Mountain Hall

This year's Dinner was sold out. 

 Each summer Marble Mountain has a special weekend festival, and we arrived this year just in time to participate in some of the activities. The Saturday night Dinner at the Community Hall is always not to be missed if at all possible.  The ladies in the community prepare wonderful dishes and for $10. one can enjoy a great dinner and also meet and greet others in the community.

Justin the fire chief of the Valley Mills Volunteer Fire Department arrived in this "antique" fire truck.

The tables laden with wonderful dishes prepared by the ladies of Marble Mountain.

Dan (front left) has just about cleaned his plate.

These two sisters are ready to enjoy their dinner.  One is dressed like Anne of Green Gables.

This year there was even a sing-along.  Someone had written a song about the Marble Mountain Road that is know as the road of potholes.  This was a nice touch to the wonderful meal and the socializing with friends.

I'm so glad we were able to attend the Dinner this year.

A Weekend of Birthday Celebrations

Decorated birthday cookie.

There are three birthdays in our family in July and August (*not counting mine).  Meredith's birthday was in mid July, Dan's birthday was Monday, and Granddaughter Grace's birthday is August 7th.  We decided to celebrate all three with a cookout Sunday evening. (We celebrated Dan's birthday again on Monday with family and friends.) 


Everyone likes hamburgers so we grilled those.  For sides we had potato salad, mac n' cheese, baked beans and a salad. 

All is ready.  Waiting on the burgers.

Granddaughter Grace particularly likes a decorated large cookie as opposed to cake so to please her I picked up a cookie at Harris-Teeter.  There were several flavors of ice cream (all from Local Fresh) for folks to choose their favorite. (vanilla, chocolate, Carolina Crunch, maple walnut, and cookies n' cream)

Birthday cookie.

When I was in Ireland recently, I found these little silver earrings. A perfect gift for Grace.

Tiny little silver earrings I found in Ireland for Grace's 14th birthday.

On Monday we celebrated with cake and ice cream for Dan's 88th. 

Dan's cake made by Macy Cakes. 

Cake and ice cream. 

It was a fun weekend.   (*My birthday is at the end of August, and we will celebrate at a later date.)