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...

Happy New Year and here I go again with my first post being a salad. We’ve had a lot of over-indulging during  the holidays, as most people have,  so I am definitely focusing on salads now.  Our first over-indulgent event was my neighbor’s holiday party that I wrote about  here .  And then at the last minute, we decided to go to Boise for Bruce's office party there.  It's been awhile since we've traveled for Christmas parties because of the pandemic plus last year we were in Spain so I was a little eager to go this year. We stayed at my brother's house and had good visits with he and his wife.  Two of my other siblings were also in town so it was really nice for all of us and our spouses to be together.  We also had great visits with so many of the  Bratney Company  employees who I hadn't seen in years and various friends from when we lived in Idaho from 1998-2015. It was a very festive time to be in town and the weather was gorgeous u...

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...

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.         ...

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.        ...