Sylvia's Scenario

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. ...

You can probably guess we are back on the healthy eating wagon after a busy holiday of indulgence.  Despite not really entertaining that much, I still did all my usual Christmas decorating and baking this year.  In fact, I had time to do more!  We quarantined for 10 days before Christmas Eve so we could get together with my sister and her husband who did the same.  It's really nice to have a "normal" evening once in awhile like we did for  Thanksgiving .  I try to make it special with decorations and lovely table settings since we don't get to do this type of thing very often anymore.  And with all my extra time, why not?   The next day on Christmas is when our kids and grandkids came over for our first Christmas with Nick's family since they moved back from Japan after 7 years.  We had a quick turn-around time to put the board extensions in the table so we could all spread out and re-set the place settings.         ...

I made several "new" recipes for Christmas dinner this year and after taking a poll, this was people's favorite item of the whole dinner! I know they don't look like much but these potatoes were amazing. They were like Twice Baked Potatoes only no skin. I wanted a potato dish that was flavorful enough that you could eat them plain with no gravy or anything on them and BINGO, these were it. And I wanted some that I could make ahead of time.  That was the theme of my Christmas dinner - Make Ahead.  On Christmas, you don't want to be spending all your time in the kitchen when you're hosting a Christmas party.  I want to be able to join in the fun!  We had ten people here for Christmas which is a small number for my family so thus, I felt like experimenting a bit.  We had our usual Mustard Crusted Beef Tenderloin   along with horseradish and mustard sauces, another new recipe for peas that was a hit, a green salad with pears and apple and pomegranate dress...