Sylvia's Scenario

Our weather has cooled off, at least temporarily, so today I made soup.  Imagine that.  Just a few days ago, we had hot weather and smokey air from wildfires but it only lasted a couple of days and today the weather was typical Seattle weather.  We love the cool, marine-layer morning clouds that end up burning-off by afternoon, ending up in the high 60's.  That is a typical day here.  I was actually cold!  So, I pulled out this soup recipe from  Hannah Freese, RD  that I've been eyeing lately because it looks so healthy.  When I served it, Bruce asked what makes it taste so rich; was there a lot of butter in it? or cream?  Neither.  It's nutritional yeast and the hemp seeds.  Nutritional yeast has a nutty and cheesy flavor to it, thus the title of this soup as "cheezy".  Vegans often use it in place for cheese.  I buy it at Trader Joe's in the spice section and Hannah Freese, RD uses it in a lot of her recipes. ...

I've made a lot of different types of chocolate cakes before but now I think this recipe will be my go-to chocolate cake.  Yesterday, we celebrated birthdays for five people in my family. Yes, five . We have a lot of July birthdays but since the grandkids were in Japan during their own two birthdays, we had to celebrate now that they are back and I made this chocolate cake. After I decorated it, it looked like this: Our 5-year-old granddaughter requested chocolate cake so I picked Ina Garten's Beatty's Chocolate Cake.  It was a huge success.  We let her blow out the candles and she was so thrilled.  But she was more thrilled eating it and even commented how good it was.  I told her I'd make it every year for her birthday if she wanted.    Everyone loved this cake.  It was super moist and chocolately.  As with many of my recipes that involve chocolate cake, it uses coffee to bring out the chocolate flavor. The batter was more runny than most ...