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...

                                                              Happy 2024! I can't believe a whole year has gone by already.  I think the older you get, the faster each year goes by.  But we are still in Spain and enjoying being with family so I'm not really thinking that much about time.  I'm just enjoying the moment.     We've discovered a couple of favorite drinks during this trip to Spain.  One would have been perfect for New Year's Eve...if we could have stayed up that late.  (We're grandparents, remember?)   When people think of Spain, they most likely think of the popular drink of sangria or the wine punch made with wine, fruit juice, sweeteners, and fresh-cut fruits with brandy or flavored liqueurs occasionally added to the recipe. They will even sell sangria in bottles ready to drink her...

Over the holidays, I experimented with making pizza crust with my sourdough starter that I got during the first year of the pandemic.  (I guess that's how we'll refer to the pandemic now;  the first year - 2020, the second year - 2021, the third year -2022...)  I wrote about it  here  when I made our first sourdough pancakes with the sourdough starter.  When I made this pizza crust recipe, everyone LOVED this pizza crust as much as the sourdough pancakes.  The crust did not really taste "sour", interestingly.  The pizza as a whole was just very yummy.   I prefer the New York style pizza crust that is very thin and crisp.  If you like the deep dish Chicago-style pizza crust, you could probably still use this recipe for that, too.  It's just how you decided to spread it out on the pan.  This recipe describes the New York style which will make 3 medium pizzas or 2 larger pizzas.  Of course, what you prefer for your toppi...

We are starting our New Year on a spicy note, specifically with  Chicken Curry with Sweet Potatoes  that I made for dinner last night.  We forget how tasty some of the recipes are on my blog and this one is a favorite.  On New Year's Eve, we invited my friend to dinner who lives in the neighborhood and I made my  Chinese Chicken Salad  and  Won Tons .  Knowing my menu, she brought some Vegetable Egg Rolls with Peanut Sauce that was like a rolled up salad with the most delicious peanut sauce that was finger-licking good.  I especially had fun using my new dinner plates on New Year's Eve that Lauren gave me for Christmas from my favorite Seattle shop called Watson Kennedy . These dinner plates are their beige cabbage plates and I love them.  Setting the table brings such simple pleasure and joy when I get to use my new dinner plates.  It was a lovely, quaint evening sitting by the fire talking and getting ca...

Tonight, we walked up to one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants called  Circa   for dinner for a special New Year's outing. We get too tired to stay up until midnight these days so going out for dinner is a special enough occasion for us.   It was just a last minute idea since we didn't have any other plans for the evening.  If we do stay up until midnight, we can see the fireworks at the Space Needle from our house, although it is far away so it's not that spectacular for us.  If we want to walk to dinner, there are several places we can walk to but Circa is our favorite.  It was very festive in the restaurant tonight.  They even had a special New Year's menu tonight.   I ordered the Absinthe Bubbly to start off.  Absinthe is an anise-flavoured distilled, highly alcoholic spirit similar to gin.  It is one of the alcohols in a Sazerac (along with whiskey) that is a New Orleans classic, where it originated.  ...