Sylvia's Scenario

One last zucchini recipe before summer ends and then I promise I will done with zucchini.  I got this recipe from my neighbor, Karen, who likes to entertain with parties at her house.  I've written about her parties before  here ,  here  and  here  just to list a few.  This month she had a Hawaiian-themed barbecue for seven of us neighbors with a wonderful dinner of barbecued ribs, chicken, pork, potatoes, Caesar salad, macaroni salad along with shrimp skewer appetizers and dessert of  pineapple upside-down cake .  Our cocktails for the party were Lava Flows, one of my favorite Hawaiian drinks.  They are like a pina colada only with strawberry swirled throughout. Yum! We had a beautiful day for the party and it was a great success.  I even brought my ukulele and played some Hawaiian music for some background music which quickly put everyone in the mood.  They all loved that unexpected bit of entertainment.   I know su...

I've made this recipe a few times but I've never posted it so now I am finally making it official.  The combination of lemon and rosemary together on pork really makes this recipe a keeper.  Our local Metropolitan Market has a coupon this week to buy-one-get-one-free for pork tenderloin so once again I made this recipe. We like to barbecue it but you can also cook it in the oven as the recipe instructs. It only takes about 20 minutes to cook so it's a pretty quick meal.  It's also special enough to serve with guests which we've also done in the past. This is a recipe I got from   Hannah Freese, RD  who is actually discontinuing her nutrition business so there may not be a link to her page soon.  I've enjoyed following her nutrition advise these past three years and plan to continue with everything she has recommended to me.  I feel the best I've felt in ages so, of course, I will continue.  I realize getting three joint replacements also has had s...

Our local grocery store often has specials that include aged top sirloin steak- buy one, get one free. We usually have these in the freezer and Bruce and I will then split one between us for dinner. We took a few of these out of the freezer when we had steak to celebrate Father's Day  this year. Of course, they aren't as great as t he special Waygu beef from Japan that we gave Nick on Father's Day but they were definitely the second best. You can't beat a good quality barbecued steak. However, we've changed it up a bit this summer and I'm trying new recipes with steak for variety and this steak recipe with Chimichurri sauce is a winner. Chimichurri sauce is a sauce that is very popular in Argentina and South America where it is used to accompany steak or used as a condiment for fish, chicken, lamb or even pasta.  You can consider it a lot like how we use  pesto  in our country.   I got this recipe from  Hannah Freese, RD  and the portion said 8 servi...

I finally have a new recipe that isn't a salad.  Imagine that.  We've had this recipe twice in one week because it's so good (from Hannah Freese, RD ).   Last night, we barbecued the chicken and earlier in the week, we baked it.  Both were superb.  Here's what the baked version looks like: You get lots of juice with the baked version so if you have rice, mashed potatoes or some other side dish that you want to drizzle the juice on, then this version is perfect.  The marinade has lots of citrus in it so this makes for a very addictive sauce and the want for more, more, more...thus I made it twice this week. As it was marinating yesterday, my neighbor, Ginny, texted me to see if I wanted to go walking later on so I texted back and said yes but asked if she wanted to come over and try my new recipe for dinner.  So, she came over and the three of us had a really nice dinner of Cuban Mojo Chicken Thighs out on the deck on a beautiful summer evening and...

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...

We barely squeezed in a family barbecue this summer because of all the remodeling going on this year.  But with Nick visiting from Japan, we decided to go ahead and invite everyone over even though the remodeling is still not completely done.  Sometimes I wonder if it ever will be completely done...but that's another story.  I still plan to do a "before and after" post when and if it ever is completed. Anyway, Nick came to visit for 10 days from Japan and we had such a good time while he was here.   He had a list of favorite foods he wanted to eat while he was here so I was busy preparing many of his favorites.  For the family barbecue, we did Bruce's barbecued baby back ribs . They are finger-licking good! Everyone who came brought side dishes to go with the ribs so we had quite a variety of food. I made my Harvest Apple Sangria with Bourbon and Thyme  as a fall cocktail to start off the party as people arrived.  I ...