Cranberry Mango Relish

This is a quick Cranberry relish I used today for Thanksgiving. It's a great way to make a canned relish seem like your own.

• 1 can of whole berry cranberry sauce
• 1 mango cut into cubes
• 1 tsp of fresh ginger zest
• 1 handful of chopped cilantro
• zest from half a lime
• juice from half a lime

Combine all the ingredients in a pot. Heat over medium high stove until the sauce begins to boil. Remove from the heat and allow to cool before serving.

Cheap and Easy Lemon Salmon Burgers

This is an inexpensive way to have a nice meal and get those Omega 3's into your diet. When you look at my ingredient list you will see quite a few fresh herbs on the list and you may think to yourself, "Inexpensive, who is she kidding fresh herbs are as high as a cat's back." See my previous blog for tips to make fresh herbs more affordable.

This recipe makes 4 patties.

• 1 can of salmon
• 1/4 cup of oatmeal
• 1 teaspoon of lemon zest
• 1/2 of a medium white onion finely diced
• 1 handful of cilantro
  
• 3 sprigs of fresh thyme
• 2 sprigs of rosemary
• 1 teaspoon of ground tarragon
• 2 egg
• salt and pepper to taste

In a blender combine the rosemary and cilantro and process to get a paste. In a small bowl whisk one egg and set aside as a wash. In a bowl separate the salmon from the bone. Combine the herb paste, salmon, the remaining egg and the rest of the ingredients. Use your hands to mix all the ingredients until the egg is well incorporated. Form the salmon mixture into four patties, dipping each patty in the egg wash as their completed.

Spray a nonstick cooking pan with a little cooking spray and bring the pan to a medium high heat before adding patties. Brown patties on each side about 5 minutes per side.

I like to serve these as burgers. To jazz the burgers up I like to combine Mayonnaise with a little more cilantro paste, a squirt of lemon juice and a touch of horseradish.

Inexpensive Fresh Herbs

I come from one of those Southern families that seasoned everything with bacon fat and that's it. When I moved out of Mom & Dad's and started cooking on my own, one of the first things I discovered in the grocery store was the spice aisle. To me it is a magical place with little bottles that hold the secret to great flavor. With a pinch of this and a dab of that you can make plain dishes so much better. I also discovered why my Mom didn't cook with them; at three to four bucks an ounce those little bottles where pure gold. As a struggling college student sticking to cooking with bacon fat made a lot of sense to my budget. However, being young and daring, ignoring my budget and going for it was the course I took. I built up my dried herb collection slowly buying one or two a month. I began cooking with them slowly, often finding my way to the taste combinations that chefs use by trial and error and having a grand time doing it.

After I graduated from college and began to make a little money, the fresh foods section of the grocery store beckoned me and I discovered packaged fresh herbs. When I first noticed them I also noticed the price around $2.50 a package. I thought, "That's crazy I'll stick to the dried, thank you very much." But they called and my more reckless nature won out. I tried fresh rosemary and sage; I was hooked. There is no comparison dried herbs don't even come close to the fresh stuff. I still think that dried herbs have their place, but when it comes to most of my cooking I'd always rather use the fresh stuff. The price is a problem though and keeping herbs fresh in the frig is also an issue. I've found that they go bad quickly. The solution to both of these problems: grow your own.

Go to your local plant nursery and buy Thyme and Rosemary plants. Pick up Parsley, Cilantro and Basil seeds at your local grocer or feed store and plant them. No really, it's that simple. What I've found is that most herbs are weeds that taste good. They don't take a lot of effort to grow. The hardest part is finding a sunny spot in your house or yard to grow them. If I can do it you can do it too. Trust me I have the biggest, black thumb you ever saw. It's actually reassuring, I've found something even I can't kill. Just stick them in a pot, water them now and again and watch them grow. I have fresh herbs at my finger tips all the time and green things around the house.

Basil and Cilantro are annuals, so I do have to plant them each spring, but once they get going they produce more leaves than I can keep up with in my cooking. So at the end of summer I pick my plants clean, put the leaves into the blender and make paste from them. I put the paste into little ice trays and freeze them. Then I have fresh Basil and Cilantro all year round for the price of a package of seeds.

Another Oyster Dressing for the Holidays

Oyster dressing is a Southern classic and there are as many recipes as there are people who make it. This is my recipe and, of course, I think it's the best. This is an offshoot of a recipe I learned from one of my Aunts. Oddly enough she doesn't like oysters but she loves oyster dressing. The secrete to this recipe is not letting the oysters overwhelm the rest of the ingredients. This is hard to do because the oysters really want to take over. I will tell you how to keep them in check.

Many of the ingredients I use for this recipe are prepackaged items. Before you turn away in horror because of my betrayal of fresh ingredients, please read my reasons why. One it's quicker and time is at a premium around the holidays. Two it tastes better, well unless you saute everything in butter, but I'll get to that in a minute. Three it's "greener" and more "slow food movement."

You'll probably argue with the last and that's fine. I'd love to hear it, but let's examine one of the premixed packaged products. I use as an example PictSweet Seasoning Blend. It has green and red bell peppers in it. Do you really think that the bell peppers in your supermarket are locally grown in November or are they shipped from some place like Florida? Well I live in Florida and we aren't growing bell peppers in November where I am. You have to go to South Florida to find where they're growing summer vegetables in November and that's 550 miles or 8 1/2 hours from my house. Odds are they aren't any closer to you. Think about it. What is less expensive and uses less fuel: freezing and trucking 80 tons of bell peppers or trucking 20 tons of "fresh" bell peppers and throwing away half when the truck arrives because of spoilage? It makes a lot of sense, trucking those veggies all the way to your town just to throw them in your landfill - not really. Buy the flash frozen packages of veggies, not with the cheese sauce obviously. Use effectively the good technologies we have available to us.

About the butter. Several years ago my Dad had quintuple bypass surgery. Never heard of quintuple bypasses? Well it's when they replace every artery going into and out of the heart and the artery that feeds the heart. He was a bacon and beef couch potato man before the heart attack and he's a vegetarian now. Something about looking death in the eye changes your outlook on life. You might say well, he didn't exercise and ate bad for you stuff so what do you expect? I eat healthier and exercise so that won't happen to me. Well maybe, but my Dad's cousin, who's hobby is hiking, who has in fact hiked Mount Kilimanjaro, and who runs up and down the steps of The Swamp in Gainesville, Florida several times a week, guess what he had - a heart attack. Do you exercise as much as a guy who walked up and down Mount Kilimanjaro? On top of being a stark warning to me about the hazards of cholesterol these two heart attacks suggest to me that there is something to the genetic links to heart disease. Trust me, these two men may look alike and they may both live in Florida, but that's where their similarities end. That tells me I should mind my P's and Q's and save my cholesterol intake for things I really like.

This recipe makes 1 12"x8" tray of dressing which is approximately 12 1/2 cup servings.

• 1 12oz package of frozen PictSweet Seasoning Blend
• 1 4oz jar of sliced pimentos
• 1 cup of grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 16 oz package of corn bread stuffing
• 3 cups of chicken stock
• 1 pint of oysters
• 1/2 teaspoon of red pepper flakes
• 2 teaspoons of coarsely ground black pepper
• 2 teaspoons of paprika
  

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F

Cut off the foot of the oysters. Then cut the oysters in half or quarters and saute them on the stove for about 5 minutes. Drain the juice, and put the oysters in your stuffing pan. Draining the liquid is crucial. If you don't, all your stuffing will taste like an oyster. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix. Put the pan in the oven and bake for 30 minutes.

Serve hot or cold.

I'll bet you thought it would be harder than that.

Simple Light Pumpkin Cheesecake

It's getting to be Thanksgiving season and that means food, food and more food. If you want to watch your calories and are concerned about things like cholesterol, bellow is a simple cheesecake recipe that is nearly guilt free. Traditional cheesecake is baked in a springform pan and as the baker you have to worry about the cake falling before it's done, cracking during baking and worst of all removing the springform after the cake cools. I simplify this recipe by baking this "cake" in pie crust. I use store bought graham cracker pie crust to shorten the cooking time but feel free to make your own. One of the ways I keep this recipe guilt free is that I use fat free cream cheese. I've found that fat free cream cheese has as much flavor as regular cream cheese; however when your cooking with it be careful that the recipe isn't relying on the cream cheese to provide the fat/oil needed for the finished product, because it won't. This recipe doesn't need the fat of the cream cheese just the flavor so the fat free cream cheese works great.

This recipe makes 2 cakes.

• 2 graham cracker pie crust
• 2 packages of fat free cream cheese at room temperature
• 1 package of 1/3 less fat cream cheese at room temperature
• 1 can (15 oz) pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie mix)
• 4 eggs
• 1/4 cup fat free sour cream
• 3/4 cup Altern sugar substitute
• 3/4 cup light brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon pumpkin spice
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Using a mixer on low combine the cream cheese, pumpkin puree, eggs and sour cream until well combined and creamy. Add the Altern, brown sugar, pumpkin spice and vanilla and continue to mix until all the ingredients are incorporated. Increase the speed of the mixer slowly to high and add the flour.

Pre heat oven to 350 degrees F.

Place the pie crusts on baking sheets and pour in the cake batter, each pie crust should be just full. Once the oven is heated put the baking sheets side by side on the middle rack. Pour water into each baking sheet until they are full. Bake for 50-60 minutes.

Allow the cheesecake to cool completely before serving. This cheesecake doesn't need anything else but if you are feeling like you deserve a reward for being so good by cooking with fat free cream cheese and sugar substitute than topping this with caramel sauce, pecans and whip cream is really good.

Breakfast Bran Muffins

Breakfast has always been an issue for me. Either I've staid up to late the night before and I want to lay in bed as long as I can to get some extra sleep therefor I'm rushing out the door or I've gotten up early to get some things done and time flies away from me and I'm rushing out the door. In both cases I'm in a hurry and don't have time to stop for a proper breakfast. I've found these muffins to be a tasty and good for you solution to my breakfast dilemma.

This recipe makes 12 muffins.

• 1/2 cup nut pieces either pecan or walnut
  
• 1/3 cup sugar
  
• 1 cup extra-fiber bran cereal
  
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup low-fat buttermilk
  
• 5 ounces baby food pureed prunes
  
• 1/2 cup dried fruit either raisins or dried cranberries
  
• 2 eggs
  
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
  
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
  
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
  
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
  
• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne powder
  
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Mix the bran cereal, eggs and baby food together to allow the bran cereal to begin to break down. Most recipes at this point will call for mixing the dry ingredients in a different bowl and than combining the wet and dry ingredients as a last step. This is to prevent the gluten in the flour from forming which is a good thing but I don't like to use two bowls. One I don't want to clean two bowls and two it takes up counter space so I don't use the traditional method. To avoid having the gluten forming what I do instead is add the other ingredients except the flour and buttermilk to the cereal. Last I add the flour and the buttermilk.

Spoon the batter into muffin tins. Bake for 20 minutes at 400 degrees.

Once you have the basic recipe down there are some variations that I like to do with this recipe.

Add:

• 1/4 cup of flax seed flour
  
• 2 bananas mashed

When I do this I add half of the buttermilk and mix to see what the thickness of the batter is. The batter should be thick so that it barely runs off the spoon but not so thick that you need an ice cream scoop to get it into the muffin tins.

The other thing I do is use a finely diced apple or fresh blueberries instead of the dried fruit when I have them.