​Apple Themed Desserts 
By Elizabeth Dubos
 
1. No-Churn Caramel Apple Ice Cream
Prep Time: 20 Minutes, Cook Time: 6 hours or overnight
Ingredients:
                        2 medium apples, recommend: Courtland or Red Delicious
                        2 tablespoons unsalted butter
                        1/2 cup brown sugar
                        1/2 tablespoon cinnamon
                        1 tablespoon vanilla extract
                        2 cups heavy cream
                        1 can of sweetened condensed milk
            Instructions:

1. In a large saucepan, cook chopped apples, butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla extract for 5 – 7 minutes, or until apples are soft
2. With an electric mixer whip the heavy cream until it forms stiff peaks
3. In a separate large bowl use the electric mixer to combine sweetened condensed milk and apple-caramel mixture
4. Gently fold apple-caramel mixture into the whipped cream
5. Transfer to a freezer safe container to freeze for a minimum of 6 hours, or overnight

 
2. Oatmeal Cinnamon Apple Cookies
Prep Time: 20 Minutes, Cook Time: 30 minutes
Ingredients:
            2 cups all-purpose flour
            2 cups rolled old fashioned oats
            2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon ginger
            1 cup brown sugar
            1/4 teaspoon salt
            1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
            2 tablespoons vanilla extract
            3 apples, finely chopped, recommended: Granny Smith or Red Delicious
            1 large egg
Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350º. Line two cookie baking sheets with parchment paper and lightly butter the top (so cookies will not stick)
2. In a large bowl combine the dry ingredients: flour, oats, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, sugar, and salt
3. In a separate large bowl mix egg and sugar until well combined
4. In sugar mixture add egg and vanilla extract
5. Add dry mixture to wet mixture in 3 increments, so it is well combined
6. Add apples
7. Using an ice cream scooper, make 1 inch cookie dough balls and place them on baking sheets
8. Bake for 12 – 15 minutes or until the edges of the cookies are brown

 
3. Caramel Apple Cheesecake Bars
Prep Time: 20 Minutes, Cook Time: 40 minutes
Ingredients:
            Crust:
2 cups all-purpose flour
            1 cup brown sugar
            1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
            Cheesecake Filling:
            3 8oz. cream cheese packages
            1 cup granulated sugar
            3 large eggs
            2 tablespoons vanilla extract
            Apple:
            4 apples, finely chopped, recommended: Granny Smith or Red Delicious
            2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon ginger
           
Topping:
            1 cup brown sugar
            1 cup all-purpose flour
            2 cups rolled old fashioned oats
            1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350º. Line a 9 x 13 in baking pan with parchment paper and lightly butter the top
2. Crust: combine flour and brown sugar, then firmly press mixture into baking pan. Bake 12 – 15 minutes or until golden
3. Cream cheese filling: in a large bowl use an electric mixer to combine cream cheese and sugar. Add eggs 1 at a time until well combined. Pour over warm crust
4. Streusel Topping: in a medium bowl combine all ingredients by hand to thoroughly combine butter into mixture. Bake 40 minutes or until filling is set.
5. Optional: Add a caramel drizzle over the top and serve

 
4. Chocolate Cinnamon Apple Brownies
Prep Time: 20 Minutes, Cook Time: 40 minutes
Ingredients:
4 apples, finely chopped, recommended: Granny Smith or Red Delicious
1 large egg
1 cup white granulated sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 tablespoon cinnamon
Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350º. Line a 9 x 9 in baking pan with parchment paper and lightly butter the top
2. In a large bowl use an electric mixer to combine melted butter, sugar, and egg
3. In a medium bowl combine flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon
4. Combine flour and egg mixtures until well combined    
5. Fold in chopped apple pieces
6. Bake for 30 – 35 minutes

 
5. Caramel Apple Fudge
Prep Time: 6 Minutes, Cook Time: 4 – 6 hours
Ingredients:
2 apples, finely chopped, recommended: Granny Smith or Red Delicious
1 13.4 oz dulce de leche can, recommended: Nestle
2 bags of white chocolate chips (10 oz per bag)
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 teaspoon salt
Instructions:

1. Line a 9 x 9 in baking pan with parchment paper and lightly butter the top
2. In a large microwave safe bowl melt dulce de leche and white chocolate chips until well combined

Note: Microwave in 1 minute increments and stir in between

1. After microwave mixture is done, add finely chopped apples
2. Pour mixture into baking pan and use a knife or spatula to spread evenly. Gently tap the baking pan on the counter to release air pockets
3. Cover with refrigerator safe container and chill for 4 – 6 hours
4. After the fudge is set, lift it out of baking pan and slice into 1/2 in pieces to serve. Store in airtight refrigerator save container to keep fresh

Edited by London Koffler
 
 
 
                       

Sea Isle Summers
By: Catherine Lynch
Genre: Non-Fiction
 
I spent my summers at a single-family home two blocks from a beach in Sea Isle City, NJ. The house was unique—the only single-story house on the block. My grandfather had bought the property for cheap in the seventies with the intention of having a place where his children and grandchildren could escape the drone of daily life. Most of the other houses on the block were bought up over the years and turned into massive side-by-side homes. They were then sold at ridiculous prices because of the proximity to the beach. Our 70’s style house wasn’t cookie cutter like the other homes and for that reason, I loved it.
​
The first day that we arrived every summer was like a modern-day Hunger Games to see who would get which bedroom—a game almost as competitive as who got the front seat on the way down and who got it on the way back. It was by either hopeless tradition or rigid consistency that I was shoved into the twin bedroom where mustard colored comforters welcomed me and unknown chubby children played in the sand smiled from pictures on the walls. I never won the claiming games, mostly because one of my fingers would get slammed in either the car door or the front screen door during the dash to obtain the best room.

By the end of the game, my brother Andrew and I were stuck sharing suitcases, living in the small room. Neither of us risked putting our clothes in the dusty old dresser that looked like it was about to teeter over with a single touch. We reminded each other with a quick glance towards the undusted top that dust was dirt and people’s dead skin, and we didn’t want it on our clothes.

The closet was another story.

Andrew and I had vowed to keep the closet shut after the first time we investigated it and saw the small space and endless darkness. Thinking back to The Lost Tapes episode where a vampire climbed out of a closet, all too similar to the one in our shore house bedroom, to suck the blood of a young boy, we were far from willing to look inside again. Still, as children under ten do, we continued to scare each other at night by speaking of vampires crawling out and daring each other to open the door.

“Why not try it?” we’d taunt each other. “If you’re not scared and believe there’s nothing in there, then open it up.”

The closet was the reason I spent most of my time in the largest room in the house, an open plan consisting of a living room, dining room, and kitchen. Most of our family adventures were spent in this room whether it was watching Wipe Out on the small TV or trying not to hit our heads on the air conditioning unit when we sat down on the shell-printed couch.

That house was tiny. It was completely open concept, consisting of essentially five rooms in total.  With seven people and eventually a dog shoved inside, we always made excuses to get out of the house and away from each other.
Every year when my mother got sick of us, my father would take the three eldest children out for a crabbing expedition. As I got older, I learned to go to the bathroom right before walking out on that crabbing boat for eight hours. Sure, it was easy for the guys to go, but I was less than comfortable with hopping in the murky waters of the bay to relieve myself where the crabs could pinch my feet. After crabbing for eight hours we would bring our catches home— making sure that none of the crabs that we took were pregnant or babies. Then it was into the pot they went, supplying the meat for our crab and spaghetti dinners that lasted for two days. By the time all the prepared food had been eaten, our stomachs revolted at the thought of eating more crab.

There were traditions we had besides crabbing that we had kept throughout the years. There were the two nights of amusement park rides that held their own set of traditions. When we went to the Ocean City park rides, we stopped at a McDonalds along the way and challenged each other not to throw up on the rides. There were more spinning rides at the Ocean City amusement park than there were at Wildwood. When we went to the Wildwood amusement park, we got midnight pizza on the way back if our stomachs could handle it. The rollercoasters tended to kick all the appetite out of us.

My parents would bring us to the beach to exhaust us. We would grab our boogie boards from the collapse in the backyard shed and take a shortcut across our neighbor’s yard to get to the beach quicker. My mother would remind us to stay near the lifeguard and we would tend to let the current “drift us away.” Or, at least, that was the excuse we gave her when we returned on land. We’d then bury each other in the sand, packing it down with water so we couldn’t escape. My father wouldn’t come out in the sand as much as he grew older. He’d remind us of his Melanoma scare about thirty-thousand times before lathering us in so much sunscreen that our eyebrows disappeared in the white face he’d painted on.

The threat of cancer wasn’t the only aspect of summer my father warned us about. The second threat, named by the community as “greenheads,” were the most imminent threat every summer. We never knew which summer they would be there. There were some summers where we never saw a single greenhead and others where we would walk outside onto the small wooden deck behind the house and get bitten so many times. We’d forget to watch our feet on the rough wood and wound up with splinters in our toes.  

When our feet weren’t impaled with woodchips, we were playing whiffle ball in the green grass behind our house. We were the only family in the neighborhood that hadn’t replaced it with stone. The other children asked to play sometimes when they were renting the neighbor’s house and we’d let them, expressing our pity that they didn’t have a backyard to challenge one another in.

Still, the stone brought another challenge, when the ball went over into someone else’s yard we’d dash across those stones, barefoot, to save a home run from occurring. Often, our heroic game-changing saves had our feet cut and mother yelling at us to get in the outdoor shower to wash the dirt out of our cuts. She was a nurse so her favorite weapons for destroying germs were hot water and Neosporin.

The outdoor shower was one of my favorite parts of that house. Wood paneled on a small slab of concrete the shower was perfect for rinsing off the sleep from our eyes or the sand from our bodies. The only worry then became whether my brothers would rattle the door to scare me or how many greenheads were drawn to the warm showers.

Those insignificant worries return to me now as fond memories. Even after my grandmother stole and sold the house from us four years ago, I can still smell the newly painted white fence and the freshly cut lawn. I can hear the screams of excitement and terror from the ride-goers and the whirl of the air-conditioning unit that we dodged under walking down the alley beside the house. I can see Sal waving the children over to his hot dog cart on the beach and the planes that would drag their messages with phone numbers over the ocean.

Three years ago, the realtors knocked the house down, tore up the grass, replaced it with stone, and erected a three-story side-by-side home that was reminiscent of every other house on the block.

I remembered how we rushed to go check on the house after Hurricane Sandy had taken our own electricity in Pennsylvania and flooded our basement. We couldn’t have asked for more than to just have our house still standing. If the shore house was there then the damage could be fixed later. I closed my eyes as we drove around the block and down our street. I didn’t want to crack them open to see nothing but the foundation of our shore house with no roof and everything in pieces. When we neared the house, I heard my father laugh and shake his head exclaiming, “No way!” Our house was untouched, safe from the little bit of water that entered the house. The shore house, which was slightly raised, was just above inches of water that drowned the lawn. There wasn’t another house on the street that survived better than ours.

To this day I think it’s amazing that our shore house could survive major hurricanes like Hurricane Andrew and Hurricane Sandy with just a little water damage, but it couldn’t surpass my grandmother’s decision to sell. In the end, it wasn’t a major storm that ripped the shore house from our fingers, but the ink of a pen on paper as it signed a secret contract.


Edited by,
Corinne DiOrio

I had a fun bonding time with my daughter doing her mermaid makeup! Here's the video if you want to see us being silly and lots of bloopers. I didn't follow anyone's tutorial or video, this is my own creation. If I had a better camera it would've shown the details of the scales, but I don't have a good camera, so I did the best I could. Enjoy!

​Kristi
 

​

The Legend of Sassafras House by Anita Stafford, Dreaming Big Publications
Reviewed by Reagan G

ABOUT THE BOOK
Twelve-year-old Kale Flores is in need a friend, but more importantly, he needs money. When Jasmine Palmer tells him that there could be a fortune hidden in the Sassafras house, he thinks his luck may have changed. Kale is not concerned about the rumor of the house being haunted.

Jasmine never thought telling Kale about the possible fortune could lead to so much trouble. The Sassafras House is said to be a place someone could go into and never come out. Is it true or just another legend?

Kale is sure that all his problems will be solved if he finds the money. He doesn't know the deserted house holds secrets from the past, secrets that are waiting to tangle him in a dangerous web.

MY REVIEW
4 – Stafford did an excellent job of getting into the head of a twelve-year-old boy. Writing from a child’s point of view can be challenging because the author has to look at the world the way the child does. This means the child has limitations to what he/she can understand based on age. This sometimes causes the narrator to be unreliable, but as a reader, I did not feel like I was being tricked or mislead by his narrative. Stafford also did a fine job with vivid descriptions and literary language. The personifications and metaphors used were original, comical, and definitely sound like something a twelve year old would say. There were a few descriptions that were cliché, but I still found the descriptive language to be one of Stafford’s strengths.

Besides the few cliché descriptions, the only other issue I had with the book was the timeline. As I was reading I had some difficulty trying to figure out how much time had passed. There are a few indicators, such as “On Saturday…” or “Monday morning…” but there wasn’t a time where the readers were informed about how much time had passed in the story.

Overall, I found this book to be great for young readers. It is entertaining and easy to read. I never found myself bored or unpleased. I was stuck in the fictional dream from start to finish. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone with children in the middle school age range.

The Legend of Sassafras House on Amazon

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anita Stafford makes her home in the peaceful hills of northern Arkansas. She grew up on a dairy farm surrounded by a large, loving, and always entertaining extended family. She is a wife and the mother of a son and two daughters. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor and has worked in public school as a teacher and a counselor.
DISCAIMER: I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for writing a review. I was not obligated to give a positive review, and all thoughts are my own.
Edited by London Koffler

My Dear, Sweet River
​
By: Maddy D.
Edited by: Emily Chance

Oh, my dear, sweet river; I sit by your side day in and day out. I watch the sun caress your back and heat your cold blood. I feel your icy touch and your breath weaving mist against my ageless skin. Yet, not once in that time have I thought about what you must feel. My thoughts are idle, carefree things– you must understand. They flutter about like the swallows and butterflies that dance over your head. They are as intangible as the flickering shadows that dapple your liquid skin. Fleeting and shallow. Forgive me, my river, for such callousness; for I am nothing but a rock at your side.

Now, I think of you in your youth, wild and untamed. The sky and the sun were your companions– and the world! Oh the world! It was yours to mold; yours to take. Your dominion ranged as far as you did. As far as you could reach, your fingers clawing away the earth, uprooting trees and shaping stone; it was all to your wishes.

My dear friend, how does it feel now to be fettered? To be transformed from a raging feral beast with pluming whitecaps and melted fire? They yoked you to the earth. They stole your spirit. I watch them trudge up and down your skin, cutting into your blood and offering it to the sky. I see how it sickens you; I know how hard you try to make it not be. The toxins that seep in through the wounds make you sluggish and cumbersome. It nauseates the fish that live in your stomach, weakens the beasts that siphon your lifeblood. I see that ghastly sheen, mimicking the rainbow with its false beauty, which coats your flesh. It must sadden you. I know it saddens me to see you suffer so.

Fear not, my sweet river! Do not be discouraged. You are timeless. You survived through the biting ice crusting your skin, and later when it cracked open in gushing sores. You survived through the weeks of unending rains– the sweet, sweet rains! – that swelled in your heart, your belly, your soul, and gave you such joy you leapt your banks. Remember the earth you claimed for your kingdom then? How it stoppered your blood, forced bald spots to form on your flesh? You did not let it encumber you. Not so! You stretched out your fingers and wove a new course.

Not once did I see you doubt yourself, not once did I see you stumble. Do not let it settle in your heart now. You have come too far, faced too many obstacles to succumb to thralldom now. Let them think they have won, let them think they have you broken. Bide your time. Keep the spark of pride in your eye, the gentle song of the wind in your heart. I know the day will come again when you will race past me free and clear, cackling merrily to the sun. And I? I will be here for that day too, my dear, sweet river, nothing more than a steadfast rock at your side.

My Mind
By Emily Chance
​
My mind is full of wonderous things. Things of dark, things of old.
My mind is full of marvelous sounds. Musical laughter, whistling winds.
My mind is full of vibrant light. Brilliant colors, darkest nights.
My mind is full of wondering things. Twisting creatures, beautiful flare.
My mind is full of difficult times. Blinding tears, terrible fears.
My mind is full of horrible thoughts. Angry deaths, mostly my own.
My mind is full of beautiful echoes. Sounding memories, a gentle touch.
My mind is full of impulsive thoughts. Crumbling ledges, crashing cars.
Telling me to be perfect isn’t quite fair. I’m only human and barely all there. My mind has a mind of its own, where sometimes I don’t feel quite at home. I can’t be perfect and I won’t even try. Whenever I do I just want to cry. I mess up all that I touch, I try to fix things but it isn’t that much. Don’t make me explain this pain in my brain. I will only end up going insane. I can’t fix me, but that’s alright. All that matters is that I put up a fight. I may not always be good. And sometimes I don’t think that I should. Don’t tell me I’m bad and don’t tell me I’m wrong. Because I’m the one that knew all along. I’m full of anxiety and sometimes depression. There’s nobody here that can teach me a lesson. I’m older than my age may show. I had to grow up to be strong and bold. I learned that breaking down is okay… but you have to get up and not run away. People who love me make it be known. Because those who care, make sure it’s shown. You’re welcome for the intro to me, the blinding ball of anxiety.
​
Edited by London Koffler