Get Ready for Cranberry Season

It's almost cranberry season!

Actually, it might already be cranberry season.  Since I haven't been looking for them in the stores yet, I would not know.

It would make no sense for me to look for them, much less to buy them, if I have no room for them in my freezer ...

--- YET!

As you can tell, I don't always think of seasons as terms of weather.

For example, the orange season starts when cranberry season is at least half over.

Has "living in Florida" done this to me?

Anyway, I must get ready for cranberry season.  That means: Make Room in the Freezer!

I had to use up some veggies, some of which were stored in the freezer, and others in the vegetable crisper in the refrigerator.  Here's what I managed to use up in the last two days:

• Two quart bags of cubed eggplant
• One small bag of cut broccoli
• One quart bag each of sliced zucchini and yellow squash
• The rest of the celery, cut into one-inch lengths
• The rest of the carrots, cut into one-inch lengths
• One bag of sliced rhubarb

I used up all the veggies by making an Indian-style dish.  We had half a bottle of a simmer sauce, which became the basis of this dish.

I steamed all the eggplant and set it aside.  Then I steamed the carrots a few minutes before adding the rest of the veggies to the steamer.

I placed all the steamed veggies into the large stew pot.  I placed the simmer sauce into the VitaMix blender and added about eight ounces of raw cashews, a can of coconut milk, some curry powder, and a couple dashes of salt.  After the cashews were fairly well chopped, I added the sauce to the veggies, turned on the heat, and simmered them for a little while.

There was such a huge quantity of vegetables that there were leftovers:

Even hubby, who declares that he "can't stand" eggplant, thought the dish was quite tasty!

I had been wanting to use up the rhubarb for a while.  The only way I knew to use it was in a pie, but I didn't want to make a pie.  I searched my RSS reader for a rhubarb recipe, and found a rhubarb and berry dessert sauce recipe (click here).

I bought a bag of frozen, mixed berries to go with the rhubarb, and made this.  It also tastes great with vanilla ice cream (ask me how I know!).

I will have to poke through the freezer again to see if there's anything else we can take out - and use up - before I can go buy some cranberries to keep in there.

And what, you may ask, will I DO with those cranberries?  Something I did with them
last year (click here for the recipe):

FYI, after cranberry season comes orange blossom season.  YAY!

Spring in Florida - Pictorial

Spring in Florida means orange blossoms.  Oh, they smell so good!

Spring in Florida also means new growth:

More Cranberry Relish!

After making raw cranberry-orange relish (click here to see) for Thanksgiving dinner, and again over the weekend, I had to have more.  I found the last bag of frozen cranberries in the freezer, and I thawed them.  Then I made a variation of the relish.

This time I used one bag of cranberries, one orange, one cored apple, and a generous spoonful of whipped honey.  Here's is a close-up picture, and how well one batch fits into my favorite yogurt container.

Awesome Raw Cranberry Relish!

DH made a cranberry relish for Thanksgiving dinner with friends based on this recipe.  Instead of using two entire oranges, he used one entire orange plus the fresh-pressed juice of one orange.  It was quite a hit at the dinner.  We left some there, but we had another stash of it at home.  That was gone by lunch time today, so I made another batch and took pictures along the way.

I used a 12-oz bag of cranberries, 2 oranges, 1/3 C of sugar (because that's all we had), and a 70 ml coffee scoop for the optional booze (cheap brandy).  The basic idea is to chop the cranberries and oranges separately.  Enjoy!

Variation on Special Salad

Once again, I had to have a salad made with avocado.  The first time we made an avocado salad, it contained cucumbers.  Since my husband does not like cucumbers and he does like peaches, I poked around the internet to find a salad recipe that includes both avocados and peaches.  My recipe is loosely based on what I found.

• one diced  Florida avocado, a large, bright green avocado with a seed that rattles around inside when it's ready to eat
• one diced peach
• one diced orange
• three sprigs of cilantro, chopped fine
• three dashes of sea salt

The ingredients were mixed in a large bowl and chilled in the fridge.  The taste is very mild and slightly sweet, a good contrast to the mashed sweet potatoes and garlicky, grilled beef on my plate.  Click on the picture for a close-up drool, er, view:

The Smell of Spring!

The smell of spring is in the air - orange blossoms! I haven't found the tree that's giving the sweet scent to the air. It's certainly not coming from one of four blossoms on our old, little tree:

From New House