Day 144: Saving My Energy

Thanksgiving is just a couple of days away and I have an enormous menu planned, so rather than cook dinner tonight we ordered in.  That freed me up to make my cranberry sauce - one dish down, only 7 or 8 to go!!

We ordered pork larb and chicken panang curry Gatip Thai.  As you can see, we also had some brussels sprouts, which I had purchased at the farmer's market over the weekend.  My favorite sprouts recipe comes from Tyler Florence of the Food Network.  Click here for his delicious recipe.

Speaking of recipes and back to the cranberry sauce I made tonight...  I used a recipe from Fine Cooking, one of my favorite food magazines.

Ingredients:

12 oz fresh cranberries, picked through and rinsed

1 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup fresh orange juice

2 tsp minced fresh rosemary

1/2 tsp finely grated orange zest

Take the zest off the orange before you juice it.  I recommend using a Microplane for this job, but you could use an ordinary box grater as well.

Combine the cranberries, sugar, orange juice, and rosemary in a large saucepan or pot.  Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.  Reduce the heat and simmer for 1 minute.

Remove the pan from the heat, stir in the zest, cover, and let stand for 10 minutes.  Let the sauce cool to room temperature and then cover and refrigerate.  

I don't know about you, but I always try to prepare as much as possible in advance of a big meal like this.  It helps to reduce the pressure the day of.  Cranberry sauce is one of those things that you can prepare several days ahead so I took full advantage of that and got it out the way.  Two days and counting!