Sylvia's Scenario

I haven't done a New Year's Resolution in a couple of years but I think I have one this year.  I've been pondering what makes for a festive holiday season with lots of holiday spirit and what makes for a stressful holiday season.  Everyone wants a low stress holiday season with lots of fun times and memorable moments, of course, and I feel fortunate that that’s how mine has been.  For me, I know the most obvious reason is because we haven't traveled anywhere.  It’s been really nice staying home to relax and enjoy the holidays.  Our last trip was in September for Bruce's birthday but we haven't gone anywhere since.  I get in a good routine when I’m home and I have a nice, low stress frame of mind.  My diet is more healthy and I exercise regularly.  I'm not going to say that my New Year's Resolution is to not travel, however.  There's more to it than that.  We also had friends and family come over for dinner parties more than usual so the...

 Merry Christmas from my family to yours.

I've been feeling like one of Santa's elves lately busy working in my workshop.  It's always a big push to get our boxes mailed off to Japan to Nick's family and the grandkids and then once that's done, it's another big push to get all the almond roca  mailed out to everyone.  In-between all that, it's wrapping presents and putting them under the tree.  My dinning room or workshop looks like this: It's a good thing we aren't having anymore dinner parties...!  All I have to do now is get ready for Christmas and that seems like the easy and fun part.  We've gone to a few holiday events around town in-between all the preparations like at the Public Market they call Magic in the Market.  Just being at the Market is fun in and of itself but it's extra special at Christmas with all of the festivities happening. It's my favorite place of all Seattle.  And we are fortunate that it is so easy for us to get there because we just take the water taxi...

The holidays are in full swing now and we had our first little holiday gathering tonight with two of  Bruce's golf buddies and their wives.  We invited them over for dinner and I served this new drink called Holiday Limoncello Spritz.  I prepared it ahead of time so it was ready to serve when people arrived.  It's nice to offer such a festive beverage to your guests at a holiday party to set the tone.  With a drink as beautiful as this, your guests will be in the party spirit in no time.                                         I got this recipe from   Drinks with Danica  who has the most beautiful drink recipes. I love the garnish of rosemary, cranberries (or you can use pomegranate seeds) and lemon which are perfect because it is made with limoncello which acts as an alcoholic simple syrup, of sorts. But it also has pomegranate juice and Prosecco ...

Green bean casserole, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, yams, green gelatin salad, rolls...you know the drill. It's Thanksgiving, once again, with all the usual fixin's.  Our family has never made green bean casserole for Thanksgiving.  This year I wanted to make it only in a healthier manner.  So, I did and people liked it!  Instead of canned green beans I used fresh green beans so there was a big difference right there.  Then I used my homemade mushroom soup .  I was going to make homemade onion rings but opted for the easier version of just buying some Funyuns which I'd never had before so I tried them and they were pretty good!  Plus, they were cute, as you can see from the above photo.  I used a tube of the "minis".   For whatever reason, I just didn't feel like the usual Brussel sprouts for Thanksgiving this year so the green bean casserole sounded really good to me.  Now, I think I will make this each Than...

My cooking usually runs pretty simple with not a lot of exotic ingredients but I try to make each dish as tasty as possible.  One of my favorite things to do is to invite guests over for dinner and ask them if they can guess "the secret ingredient" in a dish.  I did this with my peach pie  recipe this past summer when I added the secret ingredient, cayenne pepper.  We served that at two different times with guests here and played that "secret ingredient" game while we enjoyed our dessert.  People are intrigued by it.   It's a fun bit of entertainment while you savour a new dish.   This month, we played it three times when I made my  pumpkin flan  recipe for guests who came over for dinner.  After such a busy month of October with baseball, our November has been very low-key so we decided to get caught up with friends and ended up having four little dinner parties serving a nice, fall meal at each one. I love fall food anyway after barbec...