Cranberry Orange Relish

We survived!

We survived all the food! All the sides! and all the leftovers (Hopefully!)

I wore the stretchy pants and the “Its My B’day” pin. And I got 98 Birthday notifications on facebook. To all of you who wished me a happy birthday on Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and My cellphone- THANK YOU SO MUCH! I def felt the love!

27 is gonna be awesome.

And now that Thanksgiving is behind us, I am going to give ya some of my holiday recipes. They are worthy of Christmas in case you need some ideas.

First up, Christmas Cranberries.

I hate cranberry sauce. Like really hate it. Of course, the only memories I have of cranberry sauce is the blob that fals out of the can every thanksgiving with its unnatural color and shape. I was a food snob at 5 when i saw that gelatinous thing! But my mother was given a sample of some homemade cranberry relish and the recipe to go with it. She loved and gave me a project.

Christmas Cramberries (recipe given to me by a friend of a friend and tweaked by me)

Ingredients

3 cups sugar

1 cup water

2 lbs fresh cranberries

1 Orange (diced with rind and all)

piece of cheese cloth with 5 cloves and 2 cinnamon stick

*optional: handful of dried cranberries

1/2 cup cognac

Give the cranberries a good rinse and if there are any undesirables in the bunch, chuck them.

Dice up the orange and set aside.

In a large sauce pot, combine water and sugar. Stir to combine and bring to a slow boil.

Wrap your cinnamon and cloves in cheese cloth and secure with a good knot. (i tied a sloppy knot and had some random strings in my sauce -_-)

When the sugar and water come to a slow boil, add cranberries, orange, cinnamon and cloves and cook over medium heat. Cranberries will start to burst. Stir frequently and allow fruit to cook for about 12-15 minutes.

When the sauce thickens and turns syrupy, add the cognac. Stir for another minute and remove from heat.

Fish out the cheesecloth bundle.

and store in 3 16 oz mason jars.

This cranberry relish has a very refreshing combination of flavors. the orange really brightens it up and the cinnamon and cloves ads a balance to all the sweetness going on. I enjoyed some smeared on a buttermilk biscuit, a bit on my turkey, and of course in a leftover thanksgiving sandwich!

makes a great gift too!

xoxo

Waiting and Waiting.

Good Monday to you all.

As i type this, even the muscles in my forearms beg me to stop because of the soreness. I went to the gym yesterday with Mari- a fellow blogger who lives incredibly close to my apartment! It happened to be our first face to face meeting (cause we text like HS BFFs) and we were supposed to meet weeks ago but the snow made it difficult to meet. And with the fresh new year and resolutions still going strong we made the decision to work out together. What a great idea! Mari is a great motivator and today… I am paying the price. Thanks for kicking my ass Mari! See you tomorrow! LOL

okay.

So I had a few yummy posts to choose from and in some odd occurance- I cannot find any of my photos. The only photos I had were from my other mussels experiment. Its post-worthy so dont worry. You just might have to wait for new recipes since the others have disappeared into carajo land.

I placed an order for Fresh Direct the other day and i ordered fresh mussels again. Rather than the delivery get to my house before me and risk the mussels opening and dying before i cook them, i selected a later delivery slot.

Big mistake.

They always come early so i figured they would arrive at the beginning of the new time slot. Normally groceries come for me between 6 and 8 and this time I reequested delivery between 8 and 10.

I now know I am crazy.

Around 8:45 I was starving and didn’t have anything on hand that was snack worthy to hold me over for dinner…

So i munched on an orange and hoped my groceries would arrive sometime before I lost control and ate the jar of peanut butter that was staring at me.

at 9:55… i kid you not. Down to the last minute the fresh direct guy came. I ran to the kitchen and started to sort through the mussels. I normally dont eat late at night but I was sooo looking forward to these babies and time be damned… i already set up my steamer- i was eating!

I proceeded to clean and tap these things… and even though i was hungry I was all of a sudden scared of these things. Since my last post on mussels, I realized that i was touching something alive. totally freaked me out. And once they were all clean, I threw those suckers into my steamer and cooked them for 15 minutes.

15 minutes till perfectly cooked low cal mussels. I also bought some jarred marinara sauce (gasp!) for convenience… i like the Classico brand best because its can pass for homemade on those days when i have ZERO time!

behold! Perfectly steamed! All evenly cooked and so fresh smelling. I know it sounds odd but they smell like the ocean and that smell was just what I needed in this cold weather- and it made me hungry! I added a touch of sauce to each mussel before I dove in… halfway through I scrapped that idea and just dipped the “meat” into my sauce and went to town.

Yeah. I ate them all. There were about 30 mussels in the bunch. at 7 cals each- I had about 250 calories of seafood. I was satisfied.

Now, to recap, i prefer making my mussels in the steamer. The other method was great but this way was totally better!

i heart my steamer!

DONT FORGET TO ENTER MY RECIPE CONTEST!

I Loathe the Rain

It’s raining in NYC. And not just raining, FREEZING Rain; which means by the time I have to go home I am going to have to tread very carefully so as not to slip and bust my ass (As I am prone to doing on the DRIEST days). Supposed to meet up with Henry tonight but I’m not worried; his mammoth truck, Ruby, eats days like this for brekkie (Toot Toot for Ruby!- wait, why do guys name their cars? Hmm).
Okay, so after my crock pot disaster last night i have recovered and gotten my act together (somewhat) and am gonna show you the goods that I cooked up today (most of them).

I would have made oatmeal but I ran out of ripened bananas and am waiting on one that is still ripening so I opted for Frittata; plus I had some veggies that I needed to cook before they went to veggie heaven (AKA my garbage can).
I dug up some scallions and mushrooms and sauteed them in my roommates Emeril Lagasse stainless steel frying pan… SHH! he doesn’t know that I use it! While they were cooking, I preheated the oven to 400 degrees.

I then beat an egg with one egg white, salt, pepper, and a splash of nonfat milk.

And poured it on the veggies once they were almost cooked (they are going into the oven to cook more)

I let the egg cook for about a minute in the pan on the stove top and then placed the entire pan in the oven at 400 degrees. I let it cook for 8 minutes.

When it came out of the oven, I sprinkled it with Low fat Mozzarella (doesn’t THAT look divine?)

To serve it up, I folded it in half omelet style and garnished it with a dollop of Low Fat Sour Cream and Hot Salsa. (salsa adds lots of flavor for practically ZERO Calories!)

I tried to eat this slowly but it was too good! It was satisfying and delicious. The sour cream was a nice touch and provided a cooling effect for the HOT salsa. I predict another frittata sometime later this week!

Moving on to lunch!

I was completely lost yesterday after my plans for Italian marinara sauce fell through but managed to put together something that will be quite pleasing for lunch.

Squash was on sale last night so I grilled some squash with Montreal Steak Seasoning (McCormick Brand) and steamed some broccoli with a clove of grated garlic (trick I learned from the Original Diva, Rachael Ray). I grilled a 3 oz chicken breast and caramelized half a red onion. Threw it all together and gave it a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese.

It smells delicious and is sure to leave me satiated for the rest of the afternoon!

Throughout the day I packed these guys to nibble on in between meals.

Yummo!

Tonight’s dinner will be Whole Wheat Angel Hair, Roasted Garlic, Steamed Broccoli, and 3 oz of broiled Chicken Breast. I’ll post pics later.

BREAKING NEWS! Henry surprised me and brought me dinner!

He knows that Im trying to eat healthier so when he made salmon stir-fry with brown rice he thought of me! So not only did he save me from cooking, he did something really sweet and he earned some boyfriend points (those can be cashed in for things like: watch a guy show with him, give him a massage, letting him hold the remote control, letting him pick the movie, etc)

He knows about this blog and was very anxious to know what I thought of his meal. I thought it was good. I was in the mood for salmon. My only critique is that there aren’t enough vegetables. I love love love starch but two in one dish was gluttenous of me to eat; and yes i ate it all. I love pasta. (dammit) And it was worth it becuase then i had time to make the masterpiece that I will enjoy for lunch and possibly dinner on Thursday!