Sylvia's Scenario

This is probably bad timing posting a salad when 71 million people are being effected by Winter Storm Jonas on the east coast. Here is a photo of my sister's car parked in her driveway who lives in Bethesda, Maryland. We visited her in September when we went to Washington, D.C.  They are not new to snow storms.  She says she is well prepared but doesn't look forward to when they lose power which they haven't yet.  She worked from home Thursday and Friday since the first snow started falling on Wednesday evening.  She started to drive to work on Thursday, but turned around and returned home when she realized how slippery it was and saw a couple accidents already.  She's been homebound ever since.  It's sounds exciting to those of us living in mild climate.  Heck, I'm eating salads.   We had snow for about an hour a couple Sundays ago, but it didn't last long and it didn't stick.  It was exciting while it lasted.   So, instead...

Rain, rain, rain.  That's the weather today.  And I love it!  Am I weird?  No, it's because I have new  rain boots . I haven't really had a lot of chances to try them out, actually.  I bought them on one of our shopping adventures during  Nick's visit  when we went to Bellevue Square - where my favorite Nordstrom's is located.  I always have extremely good luck shopping there.  (And the boots are still on sale, BTW!)  I was intrigued with the popular  Hunter boots  that are the big rage right now.  They remind me of the rubber boots I wore when I was little.  So, no thank you. I'm not sure Hunter boots would be all that good for walking distances like I always do when I go out to do all m y  errands .  My rain boots work perfect with still a touch of style. But I did see the Hunter boots at Nordstrom's, all colors and all lengths. Lots of them! Really cute with boot socks. But I re...

I've been telling myself it's too early to decorate for Valentine's Day but I saw this pillow at Target and I just LOVE it!  Of course, all the stores have Valentine's Day stuff already.  We need to get through Super Bowl first before I can think about Valentine's Day but I still LOVE this pillow enough to keep it out.  It looks so perfect on my mom's old recliner that I got after she passed away.  I always loved her recliner and I loved her so the pillow is perfect in more ways than one. Ever since we put away all the Christmas stuff, our house has looked so bare.  Lauren said it was so bare it was giving her "the creeps".  I thought it looked bare, too.  It made me feel empty inside after such a fun holiday season.  I decided to unpacked a few more boxes to find some "home decor" to put around but all the stuff I have now is only worthy for maybe the basement.  Not that great of stuff.  So, last weekend I went on a mission to look f...

To counteract the delicious  blueberry coffe cake  that I made on Sunday, I've been eating salads for the past two days. Hardly a sacrifice.  I love salads and this one is a favorite.  I've actually made this salad three times since New Year's Eve when we had it with  won tons .  When the kids were at home, our New Year's Eve consisted on making won tons with Chinese Chicken Salad.  I'd almost forgotten how good this salad is.  It's fun to make, too, because you use these Mai Fun Chinese rice sticks fried in hot oil.  Sometimes they are called Rice Thread Noodles. Once you drop them in the hot oil, they immediately puff up into crunchy, Chinese-style croutons. It's always a thrill to make these and then drop them into the salad to add some crunch.  Kids love this salad because when you make these rice noodles, it's like they come alive.  Like the name implies, so much Fun! Makes 4 servings 1/2 head sh...

The nice thing about your football team's playoff game starting at 10:00 a.m. is that you can eat breakfast while watching it.  Last week, the 10:00 a.m. game caused a major  dilemma  in our day.  Today, it was nice and relaxing except we lost the game so that's a bummer.  The good thing is that I can drown my sorrows with this most delicious blueberry coffee cake.  It somehow makes a fan feel a lot better after a loss.   I was going to make regular coffee cake this morning, but I had a large 18 ounce container of blueberries that have been on sale at all the grocery stores around here so blueberry coffee cake it is.  It turned out to be one of those recipes that make it hard not to have a second piece.  And, to make it more tempting, I just happened to have two containers of frosting from Great Harvest Bakery from the last cinnamon rolls we bought.  They always give us frosting "on the side" when we buy cinnamon rolls there. ...

I had quite the weekend, not actually food related, mostly sports related with food scattered here and there. Yesterday, we had brunch at a bar called  Bill's Off Broadway .   Why at a bar, you ask?  Because we had the unfortunate conflict of having tickets to the  Book of Mormon  Broadway musical, while the Seattle Seahawks were to play their first post-season playoff game in Minnesota close to the same time.   We knew we would most likely miss the 4th quarter since the play started at 1:00 pm and the game started at 10:00 am.  We decided to record the game and watch the 4th quarter when we got home.  We would force ourselves not to look at our smart phones to see what happened and watch our recording at home to get the full effect of the outcome.  NOT HAPPENING.  We debated a lot about what to do about this  dilemma.  I guess you could say it was a botched Christmas present from me.  The minute I bought the ...

I got a lot of comments on these potatoes that I served on Christmas so I thought I better post the recipe. I made them once before for our Bratney Christmas party but never posted the recipe for some reason. Bruce and I went back to Boise last month for the Boise Bratney Companies Christmas party and one of the wives mentioned these potatoes that I served years ago. So, you can see, they really make an impression on people.  I hosted that Christmas party 4 years in a row and people still talk about it. I really looked forward to doing that each year, it was really special. There is nothing like relaxing and enjoying other's company in the comforts of one's home and I loved hosting. Now, I'm hosting my family instead so I still get to do it but I could tell when we went back for this year's party, that they missed it. After I got home and started planning our Christmas dinner menu, I decided to make these potatoes again. Just for fun, I planned the menu so the...