Homemade Double Cranberry Sauce

I love cranberries.  I love them dried or fresh especially in baked goods, fresh cranberry relish (recipe on post Crazy for Cranberries Dec 2012) and cranberry sauce. I was a big fan of canned cranberry sauce for years until I had homemade which is so much better. I found this recipe a couple of years ago, added a chopped apple and persimmons and made it this year.  My family loved it, even my husband.  I made it in addition to the fresh cranberry relish and we've decided that we need both relish and sauce every year now. It was great in combination with the relish over our Thanksgiving patties (on previous post) on the days after the big meal. It's also great on toast.Here's the recipe:

Double Cranberry Sauce

1 bag of fresh cranberries

1 cup dried cranberries

1 cup juice (any kind) or water

1 apple, finely chopped

1/3 cup honey or molasses

2 to 3 T sugar

1 T orange zest, (can use juice of orange as well with 1 cup of juice)

1/4 t each of cinnamon and allspice

optional 1 to 2 chopped persimmons

In medium saucepan, combine all ingredients and simmer about 20 minutes until cranberries pop and mixture begins to thicken. Sweeten to taste.  Serve warm or at room temperature.

Enjoy,

Bamah

 

Thanksgiving Patties

I've talked about and given instructions on previous posts concerning Thanksgiving patties but my daughters convinced me that I needed to do a post just on the patties themselves.  Thanksgiving patties started many years ago when I was visiting my youngest daughter, Aubree, who was living in Boston at the time over the Thanksgiving holiday.  We were watching the Thanksgiving parades and there was a guest chef giving recipes/ideas for Thanksgiving leftovers and he made these patties with dressing or stuffing, mashed potatoes, chopped turkey with a little gravy and served with gravy or cranberry sauce. Aubree and I tried them with our leftovers and loved them. The next year both girls were home for Thanksgiving and we made patties on the Friday after with the leftovers. My oldest daughter, Tabitha, loved them so much she decided they were the best part of Thanksgiving. Every year since we make enough dressing in order to have several meals of patties on the weekend after Thanksgiving. We tease Tabitha that she could skip the Thanksgiving meal and go straight to patties. She does enjoy the big meal but really loves the patties. Here's a quote from her, "Thanksgiving patties are the wonderful memories

of yesterday's meal, perfectly pressed together and fried

in butter." I think that says it all. The girls made patties the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving and took pictures of the process.

In a bowl, mix up dressing, mashed potatoes and chopped turkey to a consistency where they hold together to form a patty. It depends on how moist the dressing and potatoes, if the mixture is too dry and doesn't stick together, add a little gravy. We had a roasted squash mix leftover so added them to the patties as well so didn't need gravy. Fry in skillet in butter or some kind of oil until browned on both sides. Serve with either gravy, cranberry relish (recipe on Dec 2012 post, Crazy for Cranberries) or cranberry sauce.

We really like a combination of cranberry relish and homemade cranberry sauce, (recipe will be in a future post).

Enjoy,

Bamah