Focused at Fifty

Colorful Ingredients! This is a great summer pasta salad which my Mom made throughout a good couple of decades of Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day festivities as well as the occasional family BBQ. It is a favorite recipe of my sister Sheryl's, too. It is a "Haynes go-to recipe". Can't decide what to make or bring? Make the shrimp salad recipe! LOL. You really can't go wrong with it. I like it because it is not too heavy and pretty refreshing. For my salad below, I doubled the recipe for a summer cocktail party I had hosted and ended up using a little bit more French dressing than called for but it still came out great. Instead of pimentos, I substituted chopped roasted red peppers. I also substituted an olive oil mayonnaise instead of Miracle Whip. If you want to use the medium canned shrimp or fresh frozen shrimp, you could do that as well. The canned shrimp is used for ease in preparation and it still tastes so good. Lastly, I used chopped up orange p

My sis and I do a lot together. Besides my brother Adam, she is my best friend. Back about 4 years ago, Sheryl and I found ourselves in NYC overnight. I was supposed to see friends and then share a hotel room with Sheryl. My plans fell through and I was so upset. My weekend was ruined. Being my big sis, Sheryl made sure the rest of the trip went great. We decided to bring our friend Elsa to a piano bar called the Duplex in the Village to listen to some music. We got there and it was sooo crowded. As luck would have it, two small tables opened up right next to the piano and we snatched them. We had such a great time that night with the singer on the piano turning out songs from the 70's, 80's, and 90's, keeping us entertained with jokes in between. What an incredible evening it was. The singer belted out Chicago's "Saturday in the Park".  I looked at Sheryl and Elsa and we all were singing along to it at the top of our lungs! I remember looking at my sister

Happy 45th Birthday to myself!! It has been a rough week for various reasons. I wanted to put up a post for my birthday that was whimsical and fun. While going through a box from the attic, I found this paper out that I filled when I was 9 years old waay back in 1979 in ACE class (a creative class run by one of my favorite teachers, Mrs. Elaine Arbo) at Wenonah Elementary School. It was actually titled, "It's Neat to Be Me." You can't make that stuff up! I reference war and world peace a lot which I figured out was due to the Cold War deterioration in the 70's. I still want to be a billionaire but I don't think I'd give all my money away to the poor. I never became a surgeon, sorry Mom (looking up towards Heaven). LOL Some answers are so typically 70's such as the velour shirts that I liked, the TV show "Dallas", and liking disco. Actually I liked disco A LOT but was embarrassed to put it down so I said I liked rock ... and a little disco