This week’s Secret Ingredient for Friday Foodie Fix is Cranberries. These little round red berries are packed full of antioxidants. They are great added to salads, scones, breakfast cereals, salsa, muffins, and of course in a sauce with your Thanksgiving turkey. Cranberries are grown in northern swampy areas from New England to the Midwest. They are available fresh October to December but you can get them frozen all year round.
If you buy fresh cranberries and have extra, place them on a cookie sheet and pop that into the freezer for 2-3 hours until frozen. Then place the cranberries into freezer bags. Make sure they freeze thoroughly before putting them into the bag so they won’t stick together.
There are my unconventional ways to cook with cranberries. The most interesting way I have eaten cranberries was in buffalo sausage from Cibola Farms. Buffalo Cranberry & Wine Sausage with Pork was paired well with pasta and was a big hit at my house.
What was the most interesting thing you have eaten with cranberries? What are your favorite ways to use cranberries? I hope you will share your recipes here with Mr. Linky or leave them in the comments section. Please make sure they are your original recipes. After you share yours, check out what others have shared and please share the link back to this blog post. To find out all of the rules for sharing visit our Friday Foodie Fix page.
Squash? I was just thinking of making some kabocha squash soup. And maybe mix a little acorn squash into it. My CSA delivery was full of squash this past week (although I'm not complaining). Hopefully I'll be organized enough to remember that you're doing this next week! I've been out of town too much lately and am playing catch-up.
Whoa — buffalo, cranberry and wine sausage with pork does sound interesting!
Hope all is well and that you're enjoying some nice fall weather. It's beautiful here in Colorado right now (after 2 and 1/2 feet of snow last week).
Melissa
Melissa- Don't know how you handle all of that snow. I don't think I would go out of the house until spring. I hope you will share lots of squash recipes. This is a new food for me so I'm looking of different ways to make it so I can find one that I actually like. As for the sausage, it comes with all of that good stuff in it from an organic local farm. It's really delicious!
Cranberries has some of the highest antioxidents in any fruit so eating them raw is a great way to preserve all the goodness in them.
This recipe is from George Mateljan @ http://whfoods.org. George has been around for a while and has a cookbook which is also packed with recipes and nutritional information along with great tips on how to enhance different foods value. The name of it is "The World's Healthiest Foods".
I made this the other day and it is wonderful, I use it like a relish with soups, beans or chicken. Can't wait to try it with the Thanksgiving turkey.
Cranberry Relish
16 oz fresh raw cranberries (I used frozen)
medium pear diced
medium apple diced
1/4 cup honey
1 tsp. horseradish
1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
Blend cranberries and then mix all ingredients together in a bowl and eat as a relish.
I blended it all together rather than keeping the apple and pear chunky – I like it best that way and I added a tad more horseradish for my personal taste.
Hope you like it!
Phoebe- Thank you for sharing. This does sound good. Thank George for a great idea.
Oh I wish I had something gluten-free to share for this one; maybe later!
Alisa- Join in anytime!
All I've got for this one is my standby Great Salad recipe that uses Craisins/dried cranberries. I've been surprised many times by cranberries in wonderful restaurant meals before. That Buffalo Sausage dish sounds amazing!
Shirley
Shirley- That was one good looking salad. I've got to grab some of the Craisins sometime. I hope they don't add sugar to them. For some reason that happens with a lot of dried fruits. Although, with cranberries being tart that might not be too bad.
I love cranberry jam! 🙂 And I was thinking of adding some fresh cranberries (chopped) to chocolate chip cookies. Hmm…!
Jenn- I love the idea of the cranberries in the chocolate chip cookies. That would be a great treat for Thanksgiving.
I'm planning something with acorn squash. See you on Friday!
Iris- Great, I can't wait. I hope we get a lot of ideas. I'm trying to like squash so I need lots of options. See you Friday!