Sylvia's Scenario

This month has been a whirlwind of activity and mental exhaustion known to baseball fans as October baseball.  Our team, the Seattle Mariners, made it to the MLB playoffs and kept winning.  They've made it to the playoffs before, exactly six times since their inaugural year of 1977, but this year they kept winning. This year they made it to game 7 of the ALCS (American League Championship Series) after winning the ALDS (American League Division Series) against Detroit.  Not only did we make it to game 7, they were ahead in the game through seven innings before they lost to the Toronto Blue Jays.  That's the closest they have ever gotten to the World Series...within 3 innings.  Agonizing, to say the least.   Playoff games are not like regular season games at all.  They're much more intense and there is lot more strategy applied by the coaches like the way they use the pitchers, how they arrange the batting lineup, etc.  There is a lot to understand...

We returned from Europe and it's been nonstop since.  Fortunately, for whatever reason, we did not have jet lag on this trip so we were able to hit the ground running as soon as we returned.  Nick came home with us from Spain because he had planned to attend the MLB All-Star game since Seattle hosted this year.   It's a huge event in town that lasted five days. But before all that began, he headed to Oregon to attend a golf tournament with eight other college baseball friends for four days of marathon golfing.  (118 holes of golf, to be exact). They are a pretty tight group of friends from their college baseball days together at George Fox University in Oregon.   They ended up being a Hall of Fame group of guys, actually.  They were inducted into their college's Hall of Fame in 2021, a very prestigious award.  Nick returned from Oregon just in time to celebrate his birthday, the first of many in July for our family.  Sometimes it gets hard fitting...

Fall is in full swing around here including our baseball team going to the post season (gotta love October baseball...Brrrr!)  thus the baseball pumpkin in my photo that my friend brought over.  She and I went to the game Friday night and it just so happened that we won with a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 9th inning with 2 outs by a pinch hitter to secure our place in the playoffs - the first time that has ever happened in Major League history!   We could not believe what we were seeing.  The stadium immediately put up the big blue 'W" for all to see. We knew the Mariners could clinch a Wild Card spot this week but we didn't know what game it would actually happen.  They kept announcing the "magic number" everyday which means how many games they needed to win to secure a spot in the Wild Card.  So, we had plans to go to four games this week so we could be there for the celebration.  I couldn't believe it happened Friday night with my friend. ...

We are finishing up a big pot of my newest favorite chili that I made over the weekend and it happens to be very appropriate for fall.  It's made with pumpkin, sweet potatoes, chicken and white navy beans.  I got the recipe from Heather Christo's blog  which is one of my favorite blogs.  She has a lot of food allergies in her family so she cooks with mostly whole, natural foods.  I am following Hannah Freese, RD's diet plan called The Freese Method .  The Freese Method has helped me by eliminating many inflammatory foods; mainly sugar, alcohol and toxic seed oils.  Hannah provides recipes and meal plans but once you learn it, it's easy to find good recipes to add to your collection.  This recipe also uses turmeric, the yellow spice similar to chili powder that works as an anti-inflammatory agent in our bodies - something I am always looking for after two knee replacements and a hip replacement over the past three years.  The sweet potato...