Sylvia's Scenario

Chocolate cream pie was always my dad's favorite dessert.  This year for Father's Day, we decided to celebrate my dad since my kids were not here and my sister's kids were not here.  However, my other sister and her husband were visiting from Colorado and her son lives here so she was the lucky one.  My brother and his wife also were visiting from Idaho so four of the seven children were here to honor my dad on Father's Day and that's just what we did. Below are all of us in 1979; my mom and dad and the five girls and two boys.  My dad was always so proud of all of us and we all wanted to make him proud, too, and with no strings attached.  We talk about that often, even to this day, about how we all turned out to be fairly well adjusted people even though our parents were not strict parents at all.  The fact that we survive our wild years of youth all in one piece is amazing!  We're old now (boo hoo) but still in one piece aside from a few joint replac...

Tomorrow is Mother's Day and I get to have a restful day while, at the same time, I get to eat good food.  What could be better than that?  Bruce got a salmon that we plan to barbecue and since Nick has been requesting teriyaki salmon, we'll marinate this salmon with my family favorite  teriyaki sauce .  I plan to make my last posted recipe  Persian Chopped Salad  because I didn't get enough of it last time.  Mother's Day is a lot like Easter when it comes to the menu.   So, Bruce suggested we have another popular dish,  Orzo with Mushrooms and Walnuts , that we haven't had in a long time.  The final item we're going to make is this Crispy Prosciutto-Wrapped Asparagus that we had on Easter.  We got a free bunch of asparagus at our local grocery store since this is asparagus season and the prosciutto turns it into a special occasion dish like Mother's Day.  I think for dessert, we'll do strawberry short cake which is something s...

For Father's Day this year, we barbecued a pot roast in honor of my dad.  This was one of his summer specialties and one that was always my favorite.  He didn't have the recipe written down so I've been trying to figure out how to make the pot roast taste the way he made it.   He made his own barbecue sauce and then just let the pot roast slowly cook on the rotisserie barbecue all day.  It was a great way to spend a summer day in the backyard with a wonderful meal at the end of it all.  Here's a photo of one of those barbecues in 1989 with my dad holding Nick.  You can see the rotisserie turkey on the table which was another one of his specialities.   My dad passed away in 1993 but we would often have barbecues in his memory like we did in 2014 on his birthday during  Memorial Day  when we lived in Idaho.  I've been trying to duplicate his barbecued pot roast recipe and I finally came up with a sauce recipe that tast...

In honor of Memorial Day today, Bruce and I took a drive out to the  Tahoma National Cemetery  where my parents are buried.   This is a veterans cemetery about 45 minutes from our house and it's very beautiful out there. During World War II, my father was stationed in  the South Pacific and was a mechanic on aircraft.   My father died in 1993 of cancer at the age of 75 and my mom passed away in 2009 from a stroke at 86 years old.  I'm glad they are laid to rest here because it is such a beautiful place.  The cemetery has a gorgeous view of Mt. Rainier, which happened to be out today. The whole place was decorated for Memorial Day and it was just so beautiful.  It was a perfect day to remember those who sacrificed their lives for our freedom.  And also a perfect day to just remember those who are no longer with us.      What did you do for Memorial Day?

This delicious drink was enjoyed over Memorial Day weekend on our first night of "sisters weekend" as everyone was arriving from out of town Friday night.  I had a total of nine guests staying at our house until Monday.  My menu planning skills were in full force and Bruce and I made all our favorite things including  teriyaki flank steak   on Sunday night, orzo with mushroom and walnuts , which goes really well with the  herbes de provence crusted lamb chops   that we had on Saturday night, along with cheesy, jalapeño and chive biscuits , cheesy potatoes, coleslaw, roasted asparagus  and much, much, more! You can't say that any of us went hungry.  Every night was a feast including Monday when we barbecued a turkey. Monday was my dad's birthday, who passed away in 1993, and my dad's speciality was to barbecue a turkey. He had one of those rotisserie barbecues and the turkey would spin around all day long. He...