Sylvia's Scenario

As always, July is flying by with all the celebrations this month.  Nick's family is not here this year so that makes it a little more quiet (since he has three summer birthdays in his family) but Lauren was here one weekend so we celebrated her, we've celebrated  my birthday  and last weekend we celebrated our anniversary; a significant one of 45 years.   Since it was such a turning point anniversary, we also took a trip in May to celebrate by taking a seven day Alaska cruise that left out of Seattle so it was super easy to do.  We've always love cruises and now we decided we like cold weather cruises, too. Alaska was so fun; bundling up and being in cold, snowy weather in a vast wildness was very exciting.  We took the White Pass & Yukon Railway at Skagway and it was so snowy up at the top of the pass.   The train is a real old-fashioned train that rides on a historic narrow-gauge railroad built in 1898 for the Klondike Gold Rush so we heard lots...

My birthday this year was one of my most fun yet.  It was simple but quite effective as I delivered on my vow to do a cold plunge in Puget Sound.   I'm pretty sure I have not been swimming in Puget Sound since I was a teenager.  The reason is because it is so freakin' cold!  Notice how we are the only ones in the water...the only ones crazy enough, I should say.   It actually was not that bad.  On this day, it was 59 degrees so it wasn't so cold that you turned numb.  I remember turning numb when swimming in Puget Sound in the summer.  But, hey!  In this day and age of global warming, I do believe Puget Sound is getting warmer because we were all able to plunge in at least three times.  And each time it felt better and better.  In between plunges, we recuperated in a mobile sauana by  Suana Moon  in a balmy 200 degrees.   We've seen the mobile sauna down at Alki beach before and I knew the first time I saw it that I w...

I wanted to make an  apple pie  this year for the Fourth of July since it was our country's 250th birthday and what is more American than apple pie?  Since we were going to a large party, I decided to make a big slab apple pie that serves a couple dozen people.   Pie is my favorite thing to make so I was eager to make my first pie of the summer.  This pie is made on a cookie sheet so there is less filling and more crust (which is no problem because this crust is AMAZING). This works well for a potluck or large crowd because it's easy to serve.  It's a pie that is like serving browies or some other dessert bar, no gooey mess to deal with like with a conventional pie.   But it tastes like a perfect apple pie.   I have not made a slab pie before but I've eaten one.  My neighbor brought one to a barbecue we had at our house back in 2015 when she brought a  mixed berry slab pie  for dessert.  She gave me the recipe and I put it on m...