Sylvia's Scenario

This is a nice saucy chicken recipe that we had for dinner after a day of rain, sleet and snow.  Yes, it's that time of year.  The suburbs got more snow than we did here in the city which is fine with me.  The grandkids had a very fun time with it. Me?  I like the snow just fine as long as I don't have to drive in it with all the hills around here.  To be perfectly honest, I'm just happy staying warm and toasty inside making Christmas cookies or thinking about the next thing to cook for dinner.  If it's not soup or stew, then it has to be something with lots of sauce.  I got this recipe from  Hannah Freese, RD ; Bruce added a baked potato to his plate that was prefect for soaking up all the sauce because it is so tasty.  I wanted to make this recipe because it included kale.  I'm not much of a kale connoisseur so usually avoid it but it's so full of nutrition (being a "super food")  that I do try to find recipes that I might li...

Here is another spring-like recipe that I've made a couple times lately, including for our Easter dinner.  It's an easy side dish that you can add to any meal and everyone will love it.                      It's a recipe from my  Hannah Freese, RD  collection that I've been following since September.  It makes life so much easier following her plan because I'm not thinking about if something is "healthy" or not.  Sure, I still make desserts occasionally for special occasions but for daily life, her plan is right on.  I feel so much better physically and I definitely have more energy now that our weather is getting nice.  I've pulled out my summer clothes and many are baggy on me now.  I'm not planning to shop for more, though, because next month I'm having my other knee replacement surgery, so I will be rehabilitating again for most of the summer.  I won't be going anywhere soon.  I'...

Yesterday, we had our first 60 degree day of the year and it was like Spring.  Today, it's back to our normal, overcast, rainy weather and I'm eating soup.  I made a big batch of my newest favorite soup that is from  Hannah Freese, RD , a healthy Cream of Mushroom soup.  The reason she calls it "clean" is because it does not contain any toxic oils or sugar.  (Toxic oils are soybean oil, sunflower oil, canola oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil, and safflower oil that all contribute to chronic inflammation.)  I've made this recipe several times and it's my newest favorite soup.  Since we've been pet-sitting a friend's dog this week, I decided to make this soup and give her some when she picked up the dog today so she'd have something to eat after being gone for a week.  She texted me later and said the soup was the best mushroom soup she'd ever had!  I agree so now I know it's not just me...I threw in some of my  Japanese Milk Bread  to go...

We are back on the healthy eating wagon after our Valentine's celebration last weekend so we made this wonderful salmon dish this week. I would say this recipe is good enough for a special occasion or for having guests over for dinner  (When social distancing isn't a thing anymore.)  We had to postpone our Valentine's dinner on Sunday because we got 9" of snow over the weekend and all driving shuts down around here because of hills so we shoveled snow instead.   It was a nice dry snow and we even had drifts around our house as if we were in the midwest or something!   We lived in Iowa for three years so we know what snow drifts are.   Just like I mentioned previously, I made my  Wine Braised Shortribs  for Valentine's Day and everyone loved them.  The grandkids just slurped down those tasty, juicy noodles so fast and kept asking for more.  I set a lovely Valentine's dinner table for everyone's holiday enjoyment and the grandkids got to decor...

We've made this recipe quite a few times since fall and it keeps getting better each time I make it.  It is originally from  Hannah Freese, RD  except I've added a few changes like the addition of mushrooms which makes it a little more substantial and adds more liquid for the sauce as the mushrooms cook down.  I only have two other pork chop recipes on my blog and I'm not sure which one I like best.  They are all different so it just depends on what you feel like.  This one is a nice rich and creamy recipe with a Thai flare from the coconut milk, ginger and cilantro.  You can even spice it up more than that by adding a bit of pepper flakes, fish sauce or soy sauce.  Another pork chop recipe is the Pork Chops with Mustard Sauce  that I made in October that adds some heat to the chops with a creamy sauce that adds some bite.  The one I made a lot in Idaho was my  Plum Good Pork Chops  because we always had so many plums around. ...

It is soup season now and tonight that's what we had for dinner. It actually snowed in the mountains for the first time today. Brrrrrrrr!  But this soup will warm you right up.  I really like the flavors in this soup because it has lemon and ginger in it giving it an Asian flare so it's not your usual chicken soup.  It also has bok choy and mushrooms in it, two of my favorites.  Bok Choy is often called Chinese cabbage so it's in a lot of Asian dishes and I love it.     I randomly bought this bok choy when I went to the Pike Place Market recently.  It was a nice day, no cruise ships in port, tourist season is over and it's a perfect time for a local like me to enjoy our Market.  I actually went to buy clams for dinner but ended up with 3 bags of food before I was done.  I bought some of the  "OH MY GOD" Flavor King plums that were as sweet as sugar. The vendors give you samples of their produce...