Sylvia's Scenario

Tonight, I made another  Hannah Freese, RD  recipe and it was so good that I'm immediately posting it.  I think it might be more of an appetizer-type recipe but we ate them for dinner with a salad.  There was no dipping sauce recipe with these chicken nuggets but you could use soy sauce or a chili sauce like we used, as shown below.  The sweet potatoes in this recipe gives them a sweetness that makes them go down very easy because they are so good.   I ended up using white-fleshed sweet potatoes but if you used orange-flesh sweet potatoes then they would be orange colored.  I would like that color, especially for Halloween so I'm putting a Halloween label on this recipe. What a perfect Halloween party appetizer these would be.  I could go into the whole discussion about the difference between sweet potatoes and yams but there are so many different kind of each. Their names are used interchangeably and there are white- and orange-flesh types of bot...

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. ...

I'm still not putting up any new "summer" recipes yet because we're still waiting for summer weather to arrive.  Sorry to say, but by the end of May, we'd only had six hours of temperatures over 70 degree this year.  Yes, I said hours .  Our average temperature in May was 52.6 degrees.  I mean, it's almost laughable.  This is Seattle, after all.  I'm not complaining, just stating the facts.  It all means that we are still eating soups and comfort foods like this Sweet Potato Shepherd's Pie.  And I love my comfort foods and soups that rain brings along with it.  There is a reason why I've moved away from Seattle four times in my life and then moved back four different times.  Do I really love the rain that much or is it really about the comforting food we get to eat when it rains.  Actually, I think it's both. I call our weather "natural air-conditioning".  We have managed to squeeze in barbecues here and there, like for Memori...

We always include sweet potatoes with our Thanksgiving dinner and this year was no exception.  However, we did have a discussion about why we include sweet potatoes when they are the least favorite of all our Thanksgiving dishes.  I'm not sure why except we always had them growing up.  Back then, our basic sweet potato dish was the one with mini marshmallows sprinkled on top.   I'm trying to avoid sugar now and eat more healthful so I decided to try this new recipe from  Hannah Freese, RD  that she included in her Thanksgiving recipes and I'm glad I did because everyone loved it!  All of my other Thanksgiving dishes were our old traditional ones.  It was Nick's first Thanksgiving back in the U.S. after living in Japan for seven years and so I couldn't change things up too much this year. I had to make all the favorites.  Nick savored every bite, too.  He was still eating long after we all had left the table.        ...

I'm not hosting Thanksgiving this year so my duties are very scaled down as a guest.  I volunteered to bring the sweet potatoes,  Hernon Green Gelatin Salad , and the  pumpkin pie .   And just for fun, I'm bringing a cocktail beverage that was a hit at our house a couple years ago called  Hard Cider Sangria . My sister just remodeled her kitchen so she is eager to have her first big, family dinner at her house to test out her kitchen and I am more than happy to give her that opportunity!  So, I decided to check out recipes for the sweet potatoes because I always assigned those out for others to bring when I cooked Thanksgiving.  I found this recipe and I already know it's a keeper.  This recipe would be delicious even without the crust because the mixture made with this casserole is outstanding.  And you can even watch a video on how to make it because I got this recipe from  Chef John at his Food Wishes blog .  I like watching ...