Sylvia's Scenario

We just returned from a Hawaiian vacation this week so for Valentine's Day this year, I decided to make Chocolate Covered Macadamia Nuts with the macadamia nuts I brought home with me.  I made them just like I always do using this  recipe  with the addition of Valentine sprinkles such as  these.   I put them in clear treat bags such as  these  and tied them with a cute Valentine ribbon; an easy, fun, yummy and quick Valentine gift. I took seven bags over to my sister's house who hosted a Valentine's dinner party.   My brother-in-law will often prepare a really nice dinner for us ladies on Valentine's Day and all the men will wait on us and we even get cute little presents.  My kind of evening.  That is why I decided to contribute my Chocolate Covered Macadamia Nuts for everyone because I know what a festive evening this turns out to be.   My sister, Barbara, does such a good job decorating and setting a beautiful dinner table f...

We picked twelve cups of blackberries the other day while we had visitors here and turned it into blackberry coffee cake.  This recipe used 3-1/2 cups of blackberries so I also made two loaves of  blackberry bread   and the most popular  blackberry cobbler  that got eaten so fast I never got a photo of it.  And I still have blackberries leftover.  All these recipes are from a very old cookbook of mine called Wild & Free Blackberries that I've had since around the mid-1990's.    And this is definitely the time of year that this little cookbook is sitting out on my kitchen counter.  We picked them at our local golf course because Bruce sees how plentiful they are when he plays golf and he has been eager to get us out there to pick and we finally did. Our visitors have returned home now but they had three children who LOVED picking blackberries and also LOVED eating them.  They were children of Bruce's nephew who was here with his ...

Soup season seems to last longer than we'd like to admit.  But, yes, it's still soup season.  We're having spring fever around here and, yes, the weather is getting warmer, sunnier, and overall just very nice and pleasant outside.  But I'm still craving the warmth of a hot soup.  We had this minestrone soup recently and everyone loved it.  My sister made it at her house but she's not sure where she got the recipe so I'll just give her all the credit. Her preparation of this dinner was a job well done! She and her husband live in Washington D.C. and they were also having spring-like weather but a dinner of hot soup still tasted really good to all of us.  We planned this trip to see Nick who spent a week there for work.  We jumped at the opportunity to go see him since it's a lot closer than going to Spain.   Plus, my sister lives there and she and her husband are a lot of fun and it's so nice to get caught up with each other's lives.  We saw N...