State Fair Food

The end of summer always signals the state fair. Warm days and cool nights and lots to see. After a 3 1/2 hour drive to my daughter's house, we walked 3 blocks to the Kansas State Fair. And look at the first thing we saw:                              

                  Free Ice Cream!!!!

WHAT??? 

I know, surprised  me too!

Free dixie cup sized ice creams. 

My daughter had been going to the fair all week, so she was telling me about all the strange and good food there. So for all you foodie people, I have chronicled the foods available.

 No sweet tea here, this is Yankee country, you have to ASK for sugar. 

I didn't see the red velvet funnel cakes, but they had carrot funnel cakes too. 

My daughter tried the deep fried chocolate chip cookie dough. They were balls about plum sized, with a batter around it, and dusted with powdered sugar. Not appealing to me at all. 

The standard fare.

These looked tempting, but I passed them up.

I really wanted to see what a Krispy Kreme Burger looked like, but I didn't want to ask anyone if I could take a picture of their food. 

How do they do that???

What did I eat? None of that. We found a BBQ place to eat. Yum!

I am joining

and

Post Cards From the Museum

For the September Note Card party I chose photos of my pets I have used on my blog, and sent them to the "museum". 

Oscar ( the wienie dog)

Tilly

Roxy

and 

Oliver

You can do these wonderfully funny museum pieces at 

http://www.dumpr.net/

Please stop by A Haven for Vee and see other great notecard inspirations. 

Back to School Breakfast Table

 Yes I am.... (back to school).  How about a back to school table?

Do this  for nostalgia, cause if you do it to for your kids, most likely they will want to kill you. You are probably the only one glad to see them go back to school.

A sunflower bowl for cereal.

A little liquid sunshine. 

The early bird gets the worm. 

I am joining 

Sunflower Tablescape

I promise this is the last you will see of sunflowers and tomatoes from me! Both are gone... I went to the farmers' market Saturday, and most had no more tomatoes for this year. 

I do love the  late summer, early fall colors of sunflowers and tomatoes.

The sunflower salad plates and platter are Provincial Sunflowers by Tabletops Unlimited. The yellow dinner plates are Pier 1 New Essentials in Butter.

Sunflower runner from Home Goods. 

Green goblets from Tarjay.

White pitcher is courtesy of GW.

I am joining

Tomato Tasting

I picked out several varieties of tomatoes at the farmers' market  with the idea of a little taste testing.

My daughter came over for dinner, and dinner was a mini tomato tasting.

It was over 100 degrees again today,  and  neither of us were very hungry. So this was dinner. Warm bread sticks, a little wine, and tomatoes.

We tasted  these heirloom tomatoes: Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Green Zebra, and  Old German.
I also threw in a beefsteak tomato, not heirloom.

The above Cherokee Purple was our favorite. It was sweet and had the clear tomato flavor one expects. 

Brandywine was our second favorite. It had a stronger, more acid flavor, yet still sweet. 

The first taste of Green Zebra was a surprise. It was kind of sharp and sour. My daughter said it would be good in Mexican food, salsa etc. Then she salted it and tried it again. We had not salted any of the tomatoes. Wow! It really changed the flavor of Green Zebra. Now we described it as tangy and crisp in flavor. We really liked it. 

Neither of us liked the Old German  at all, It had no flavor, but to be fair, it was less ripe than all the others. But I think it still might be too mild for our taste. 

I didn't even take a photo of the beefsteak tomato. By itself it was not that flavorful, but it works great for sandwiches, and with mayo and good old white bread, it is perfect.

The above tomatoes all came in one box, and I don't know what they are. Except, since we liked the plum shaped ones the best (see location at 12 and 6 above). I did some research. They are also an  heirloom Russian black plum tomato. Blackish purple on the inside, they taste a lot like the Cherokee Purple. 

What tomatoes do you like? Do you grow heirloom tomatoes? I would really like to know what ones you think are good.
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