Sylvia's Scenario

Now that summer is coming to a close, all our guests have departed and our celebrations are winding down,  I decided to get back to my healthy eating kick again.  So, wouldn't you know it that I got a craving for chocolate chip cookies.  But I solved that problem real fast by making these "healthy" chocolate chip cookies.  This is a Hannah Freese, RD recipe so, of course, it's a healthy one.  It's one of those no-cook type of cookie that tastes like a cross between a granola bar and a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.  It immediately satisfied my chcolate chip cookie craving and I made them in about 15 minutes.  They are made with oatmeal, pecans, hemp seeds, peanut butter, milk of your choice, and dark chocolate chips.  I had all the ingredients in my kitchen since I started following her eating plan five years ago.  I can't believe it's been that long.  It was September 2020 when I joined her 12-week program to fix my broken metabolism. ...

I mentioned before about a new cookbook I received from our guests who came this summer from Chicago called   Cheers to the Publican, Repast and Present .   I'm still making recipes out of it and this is one of them.  Although, I've changed it a lot and now I'm only using the salad dressing recipe with my own version of the salad.  The original recipe was for an asparagus salad but it was too large with too many unusual ingredients that got lost in the final product.  Bruce and Nick both said they couldn't taste the this or couldn't taste the that so I knew I needed to make some adjustments.  But it looked  gorgeous. I thought it would be a great spring recipe for Easter with the asparagus and I don't have many asparagus recipes so I do plan to keep it and play around with it.  In the meantime, the dressing is FABULOUS.  I kept it in a jar and used it up immediately.   I made this Asian-themed green salad twice with the dressing a...

I've been making peach pies a long time but now I think I finally found my best recipe. We had a dinner with a couple of Nick's friends last night so once again, I was thinking of something special to make.   Nick requested we do Korean barbecue so we bought the ribs already marinated which made it very easy for me and super tasty.  He also requested his favorite  macaroni salad  which was also a favorite of his friends.  I can't believe I haven't made that all summer...anyway, it turned out to be a great dinner with a few other sides of green salad, fruit salad, and rice.    But the peach pie was the star.  The recipe was in the Seattle Times the day before so that's how I thought of it, plus it's peak peach season right now. The author is  Danie Baker  who regularly writes for the Times and has lots of good recipes.  This peach pie has a secret ingredient; cayenne pepper.  The cayenne pepper added some zing to the peach pie ...

We harvested our tomatoes the other day and I decided to try this recipe.  I wanted to make it while our guests were here but then we picked blackberries and I decided to use my time to make blackberry bread, crisp and coffee cake. (Our guests were happy about that decision if I judge by how fast it was all  eaten).  So, my tomatoes were piling up.  They gave me a new cookbook as a gift for hosting them and I was eager to try some recipes from it.  I spotted this one immediately.  The cookbook is entitled  Cheers to the Publican, Repast and Present Recipes and Ramblings from an American Beer Hall  by Paul Kahan, Chef Cosmo Goss and Rachel Holtzman.   The Publican is a popular restaurant in Chicago where our guests live.  It's described as a big American beer hall with massive communal tables.  I love those kind of restaurants.  There are lots of stories with the recipes in the book which makes the cookbook fun to read. The stor...

We picked twelve cups of blackberries the other day while we had visitors here and turned it into blackberry coffee cake.  This recipe used 3-1/2 cups of blackberries so I also made two loaves of  blackberry bread   and the most popular  blackberry cobbler  that got eaten so fast I never got a photo of it.  And I still have blackberries leftover.  All these recipes are from a very old cookbook of mine called Wild & Free Blackberries that I've had since around the mid-1990's.    And this is definitely the time of year that this little cookbook is sitting out on my kitchen counter.  We picked them at our local golf course because Bruce sees how plentiful they are when he plays golf and he has been eager to get us out there to pick and we finally did. Our visitors have returned home now but they had three children who LOVED picking blackberries and also LOVED eating them.  They were children of Bruce's nephew who was here with his ...