Gram’s Cranberry Salad Sauce

Photo of a totally gratuitous California sunset, because well, it’s pretty.

OK, super lucky readers, my auntie, the daughter of my third grandma, is kindly allowing me to share her mother’s salad sauce that normally accompanies her amazing cranberry salad (I think hers does not have cinnamon). So here it is!

GRAM’S CRANBERRY SALAD SAUCE

 

COMBINE in medium bowl:

1 cup canned (evaporated) milk

2 TB sugar

1 TB yellow mustard

 

ADD, very slowly, via tiny drizzles from bottle, 

cider vinegar to bowl of milk, sugar and mustard,

to thicken the mixture.  

 

OPTIONAL: Add small dollop of sour cream or

plain yogurt to mixture.  

 

SERVE OVER CRANBERRY SALAD.  

 

 

–Gram (Jacqueline Barnard) c. 1950’s

Thanksgiving Recipe Linky Love / Visiting Food Banks in the Land of Milk and Honey

Some fun Turkey Day links:

1. 59 Cheap and Healthy Thanksgiving Recipes;
2. Mark Bittman’s Mimimalist Thanksgiving (or, at least some of it) turkey and some sides, all under THREE hours;
3. Food safety experts say the turkey can go from FREEZER to OVEN;
4. Kaylyn’s Low Carb Thanksgiving/Leftovers Recipes; and
5. Bryant Terry’s ecological Thanksgiving recipes*.

And of course -holiday-friendly  Dude, Where’s the Stove? recipes:

• My Third Grandma’s Cranberry Salad and Sauce;
• No Added Sugar Tropical Fruit Salad;
• Chocolate Almond Bark;
• Kohi Kanten (amazing vegan coffee pudding);
• Delightfully Easy Cream Puffs;
• Roasted Portobello and Asparagus; and Roasted Cauliflower;
• Delicious and Inexpensive Three Bean Salad; and
• Umami Overload Shiitake Stuffing.

* I have such a book crush on Bryant Terry. I received a copy of his new hit, The Inspired Vegan – I’ll have to post a review once I’ve done more than just drool over the recipes!

In the spirit of gratitude, I thought I’d share what I’ve learned about food banks this year. My town has a hotline people can call to find out what food banks are open each day. And this year, I helped a few friends visit them. By help I mean – making a phone call and driving people around. Not much, but, something, right?  It turns out that one my friends never got any sort of help from family during a rough patch. Not a penny, not a can. Nothing. It meant the world to her that I picked her up in my car, waited in line with her, and visited the food bank a few times. I had no clue it made a difference.

So what are these food banks like? One local non-profit with an ecological bent distributes food to seniors who pay a small flat fee each year, to get a weekly grocery bag full of lettuce, carrots, mushrooms, potatoes and other  veggies that are a shade past their prime, as well as a loaf of bread, saving them from the trash heap. A church distributes twenty-pound sacks of onions, cauliflowers, potatoes, carrots, and other veggies as part of a USDA program. Another place shares a mixture of canned / packaged foods and some fresh veggies as part of a food distribution non-profit.

So, anyways, I am giving thanks, to anyone who has ever given food, money, time, anything to any of these food banks.  Thank you for helping people in their time of need. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! And may we all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Photo credit: my friend who worked like crazy making turkey cake pops!

Roasted Cauliflower – Too Delicious to Ignore

Roasting cauliflower is akin to transforming an unappreciated commoner like Eliza Dolittle into an empress. Perhaps I should mention that I never had anything against cauliflower – I just never sought it out before now.

I happened to somehow end up with three or four cauliflower at once – so…what to do? Yes, why not try roasting? Brings out the sweetness of the vegetable and gives it a great texture. Yummy, yummy. I’ve decided it will be a non-guilty pleasure, what with the all vitamin C and other nutritional goodness it represents as a member of the cruciferous family of vegetables.

cauliflower slathered in olive oil and salt

on the grill/cookie sheet

roasted cauliflower

Ingredients/Tools:

1. 2 cauliflowers;
2. approximately 1/4 cup of oil;
3. salt;
4. mixing bowl/zippered plastic bag; and
5. toaster oven.

Directions:

1. Set your toaster oven to broil. While that’s getting hot, get into the prep.
2. Break off the cauliflower florets and slice the largest into quarters, cross-wise.
3. Pour some oil into the zippered bag, then add 2 teaspoons of salt.
4. Add the florets and shake the bag! Cover all the florets with this oil mixture.
5. Pop the cauliflower pieces into the toaster oven. (I did this in 2 batches, 30 minutes apiece).

It’s so easy. What about sauces? I was thinking about glazing the cauliflower with some miso butter – haven’t gotten around to doing that, mostly eating it just roasted. Squeezed some home-grown lemons (gift from a friend) onto the roasted cauliflowers with some dashes of soy sauce – worked great!