Sylvia's Scenario

Another recipe I need to share from Memorial Day weekend are the donuts I made for breakfast on Sunday morning. This was an experiment because I've never made homemade donuts and I thought this recipe would be interesting because you can also use the dough for brioche rolls or bread. I got the recipe from the blog hummingbird high where she used the dough - which by the way, only took about 15 minutes to make - to cut into donuts instead of putting it into the usual bread loaf pan. I love brioche, too. It's the only kind of bread they serve at one of our favorite restaurants in Seattle, the Skillet Diner . They use brioche for their hamburger buns, sandwich bread, french toast, etc. This donut recipe is perfect using brioche because it is subtly flavored with honey and produces a wonderful, buttery crumb when fried. It's everything a donut should be - light, fluffy and airy.  Brioche is not as sweet as the usual donuts so getting the right topping on it was a ...

This delicious drink was enjoyed over Memorial Day weekend on our first night of "sisters weekend" as everyone was arriving from out of town Friday night.  I had a total of nine guests staying at our house until Monday.  My menu planning skills were in full force and Bruce and I made all our favorite things including  teriyaki flank steak   on Sunday night, orzo with mushroom and walnuts , which goes really well with the  herbes de provence crusted lamb chops   that we had on Saturday night, along with cheesy, jalapeño and chive biscuits , cheesy potatoes, coleslaw, roasted asparagus  and much, much, more! You can't say that any of us went hungry.  Every night was a feast including Monday when we barbecued a turkey. Monday was my dad's birthday, who passed away in 1993, and my dad's speciality was to barbecue a turkey. He had one of those rotisserie barbecues and the turkey would spin around all day long. He...

One of the beverages I served over Memorial Day weekend that everyone loved was this Blueberry Lemonade that I found on  white on rice couple blog .  This hit the spot on Saturday afternoon after our art therapy session that we opened our weekend with. We were asked a series of questions about our feelings of the upcoming weekend and we doodled our answers on colored paper and taped them on one large board so we could look at everyone's doodles.  Some answers entailed lots of circles and some answers resulted in jagged lines. This was "sisters weekend" and since we all live in different parts of the country, we don't have opportunities to get together very often so these gatherings are always special and meaningful to us. We also did an art therapy exercise where we drew our interpretation of our space for the weekend. What does it all mean?  Some lines of individual's spaces are awfully thick...does that mean "stay out of my spac...

These are my favorite cookies and I made them again for Memorial Day weekend for our Saturday dessert after our barbecue of  herbes de provence crusted lamb chops . We had a few visitors for the holiday weekend, nine to be exact.  It turned out to be a "girls weekend", my sisters and then our daughters, then one daughter's family of her two children and husband!  They just kept coming...  My menu planning skills were busy and I decided to s erve these cookies for our second evening (with my favorite  apple cake served the first evening after m y totally delicious  homemade lasagna  wh ich is always a winner)  I also made these cookies for  Master's weekend   and I realized I never posted the recipe, horrors! They are my favorite cookie recipe because they taste like brownies except in cookie form, so how can you go wrong with that?  Impossible! They have crisp edges and chewy centers and you can never eat just on...

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there, this day is for you.  I am remembering my mom on this day, although it isn't just one day a year I think about her.  She passed away in 2009 so I like to always dedicate my Mother's Day post to her.  We had many good times together since we liked a lot of the same things. (except sewing which I could never do very well and she could sew anything.)  She liked the simple things like going out for coffee or the not-so-simple-things like going out for high tea. She only lived a couple blocks from this hotel which was known for it's high tea so we had to try it out after she moved there, of course.   But most the time we would just go out for coffee or something simple.  She just liked being around her family and it didn't really matter what we did. We always had things to talk about, no matter what.  As the years go by, I can tell that I will probably be just like her in my old age.  I just w...

We are enjoying our Cinco de Mayo in the comforts of our backyard with our homemade margaritas .  We also made some guacamole with chips and then ready to celebrate Cinco de Mayo! The only problem is that I wasn't hungry for dinner after this.  We were planning on taco salad so that is a nice, light dinner after margaritas, chips and guacamole.   We make taco salad by tossing together lettuce with some green onions, black beans, avocados, shredded cheese, ground beef with taco seasoning, and crushed up tortilla chips.  We use salsa or taco sauce as the dressing and I like to add a little dollop of refried beans. Bruce likes lots of tomatoes. All in all, it made for a delicious Cinco de Mayo!