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!