Sylvia's Scenario

Another salad for dinner again tonight and I'm still craving strawberries…so spinach and strawberry salad!  Perfect.  This is always a good salad to take to a potluck, too.  One of my favorites. Serves 8 1 cup walnuts 8 cups fresh, baby spinach 16 large strawberries, thinly sliced ( I like lots of strawberries) 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar 3 Tbsp. honey 2 Tbsp. spicy brown mustard 1/4 tsp salt 1/4 cup ( 1 oz.) crumbled feta cheese (optional) 1.  Preheat the oven to 375 degree.  Place the walnuts on a rimmed baking sheet and bake until fragrant and toasted, about 8 minutes.  Transfer to a plate to cool. 2.  Toss the spinach with the strawberries in a large bowl.  Whisk together the vinegar, honey, mustard and salt in a small bowl.   3.  Drizzle the dressing over the salad, toss, then sprinkle the walnuts on top.  Serve sprinkled with cheese, if desired.

We went to a barbecue yesterday and it was a very fun, laid-back summer barbecue - one of the best things about summertime, spending time with friends, family, good food.  It was a housewarming party of my brother's wife's sister and her husband, Courtney and Travis, who moved to Boise from Texas.  Their house is a log cabin that makes you feel like you're in mountains in the woods.  Perfect for Idaho.  I love it. Their bonus room features a big, western bar which fits the decor of the house perfectly. It's an antique bar from Idaho City that the previous owner put in. You can't find a more convenient place to spread out food for a party. They acquired a couple of kids (literally - baby goats!) to help eat the weeds on their one acre new property. And since they have an acre now, it wouldn't be complete without backyard chickens! And they have such a variety. Travis built this super cute chicken coop to match their log cabin house. Such a nic

This is our favorite macaroni salad in our family and we eat a lot of it during the summer.  I made it for the first time this year - on this second day of summer - to take to a barbecue party tomorrow.  This salad is also in my previous post when I made the open-faced grilled sandwiches for my son's basketball team dinner and served this macaroni salad as a side dish.  My kids always liked the rainbow radiatore pasta instead of the usual elbow macaroni so it's just what I always use now.\ Sometimes you can buy it in the bulk section of grocery stores with the rice and pasta bulk items. It just makes the salad a little more interesting and fun, just like summer ought to be. Makes 12 servings 4 cups rainbow radiatore 3 whole roasted red peppers, chopped (more to taste, if desired) 1/2 cups black olives, chopped finely 3 stalks of celery, diced 6 whole sweet/spicy pickle slices, diced 3 whole green onions, sliced (white and dark green parts) 1/2 cup mayonnaise 1 Tbsp. re

chicken in the pine straw

If you like making little individual pizzas with your family, you'll love making these. My kids love these sandwiches. We made these for Nick's team dinner when he played basketball in high school (along with lots of macaroni salad, brownies and Gatorade). I refused to make the typical, boring spaghetti dinner that all the other mom's did each week. Don’t get me wrong, we love spaghetti but it’s sort of boring.  And Nick loved these sandwiches so this meal was kid-approved. Then, a couple years ago after he graduated from college where he was their main starting pitcher, he invited his college baseball team's pitchers to his house for dinner when they were traveling to a local college near his house and he made these sandwiches for them (after calling me for "that recipe"). It's a good (and healthy) alternative to pizza and fun to make. The green mayonnaise is always a good conversation piece. Makes 2 servings 2 ciabatta rolls cilantro aiol

This is one of my favorite salads and I am so happy to be posting it.  You will want to keep this recipe!  It is from  Pasta and Co. , one of Seattle's best-selling take-out foods and we had one in our neighborhood when we lived there.  This was one of their salads that I would always buy and then a friend gave me the recipe because she had a copy of it from their cookbook.  So, over the years, I made this salad so many times, I don't think I even needed to look at the recipe!  I had a group of friends with whom all our kids were friends, too, so when they were little, us moms would get together for our kids to play and we would all cook delicious meals and this salad was always a regular at our meals.  Then we moved to Idaho and I forgot about this recipe.  I found out on my trips to Seattle that the cookbook wasn't being printed anymore and I couldn't find my old recipe and none of my friends had it anymore. Disaster!  It's been 14 years now and last year my s

Strawberries and Cream from Todd Porter & Diane Cu on Vimeo . Still thinking of strawberries…and Puppy ...

I am missing a fun weekend in Seattle because I have to stay home since our dog's health is not good.  We had tickets to the Mariners vs. Dodgers baseball (and the M's had a no-hitter last night, too!  I could have been there!)  Nick used my ticket to go to the game with Bruce so they had good father/son time together seeing a no-hitter, only the third one in Mariner history. Nick also saw the Mariner's for their Opening Series games in Japan since he was working there so he's already had so many highlights this season and it's only June! and he even got interviewed by MLB.com Your browser does not support iframes. I needed to stay home this weekend to tend to our ailing dog who ended up needing to be put down. So sad.  She was 13 years old and fading fast these past few days.  She had no obvious illness, just major fatigue but when I took her into our vet who did a blood test, it turned out she had leukemia.  Do