Sylvia's Scenario

Happy New Year and here I go again with my first post being a salad. We’ve had a lot of over-indulging during  the holidays, as most people have,  so I am definitely focusing on salads now.  Our first over-indulgent event was my neighbor’s holiday party that I wrote about  here .  And then at the last minute, we decided to go to Boise for Bruce's office party there.  It's been awhile since we've traveled for Christmas parties because of the pandemic plus last year we were in Spain so I was a little eager to go this year. We stayed at my brother's house and had good visits with he and his wife.  Two of my other siblings were also in town so it was really nice for all of us and our spouses to be together.  We also had great visits with so many of the  Bratney Company  employees who I hadn't seen in years and various friends from when we lived in Idaho from 1998-2015. It was a very festive time to be in town and the weather was gorgeous u...

I am ready to start eating "clean" again and get back on my plan with   Hannah Freese, RD .    I am actually craving salads right now after so much Christmas celebrating.  We had family gatherings on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the day after Christmas so it was non-stop there for awhile. Plus, we had the grandkids sleepover at our house beginning the 21st thru the 26th so I made a point of having everything ready for the family gatherings before that. That was a good thing because we had horrendous weather including an ice storm so we couldn't go out much at all. We woke up on the 23rd covered with ice! Needless to say, it caused major havoc with Christmas traveling since our airport was basically shut down.  But it did not effect us.  The grandkids are happy playing nonstop at our house especially after going to the Nutcracker.  They made up all kinds of Nutcracker games.  We had so much good food during all the celebrations, of course. ...

, I love salads with edamame (soy beans) and I buy them frozen at Trader Joe's.  They are great to throw into salads or just eat plan.  You'll often see them still in their shell as appetizers at restaurants which we also love and they are very popular in Japan.  I made this salad last night for a family dinner and thought it also looked perfect for a Christmas salad because it's red and green. Deck the Halls! I got it from  Hannah Freese, RD  but I changed it a lot from the original.  I mainly changed it because when I went shopping at Trader Joe's, the Italian parsley was in the spot where the cilantro was suppose to be and I didn't notice until I got home.  (It looks like cilantro.)  So, I used Italian parsley even though the recipe called for cilantro. The recipe also says to serve it warm but I always make my salads ahead of time so mine wasn't warm and it still tasted great.  And then I used lemon juice instead of lime juice since I was...

I've been eating this salad a lot the past week.  It's so quick and easy to throw together and gives you an instant fix for caprese.  Lauren was thrilled when she came home and found a big bowl of caprese salad sitting on the counter.  "You know, this is my favorite food!"  I do remember we ate a lot of caprese when Lauren came home from Italy after the summer of 2010 and I've put a lot of different versions on my blog since then.  These little  Cherub  tomatoes were on sale at Metropolitan Market this week and I've bought 3 of them so far. I just can't stop eating them.  I rarely buy tomatoes this time of year but these little things are so sweet, it's amazing. Turn them into a caprese salad and gone .  It's so easy to throw this salad together to get your caprese fix.  Not to mention, this salad is the perfect holiday colors. 10.5 oz. container of Cherubs  fresh ciliegine (mozzarella balls) several leaves ...