Goat Cheese Salad with Cranberry Sauce & Caramelized Walnuts

This salad was an inspiration from staring at the bowl of leftover cranberry, cherry & walnut marmalade that I had made for the Tofurky. Because it was the sauce that had made this salad, I’m sharing the recipe for the sauce instead and you can let your creativity go wild with it. The recipe was borrowed from EatingWell.com. The orange zest really made the sauce smell and taste great! To make this salad even tastier, you can add caramelized onions as well.

Ingredients
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup water
1/2 cup port or other sweet red wine (I used Shiraz, not sure what is sweet red wine)
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 cup dried tart cherries
1 12-ounce package fresh or frozen cranberries
2/3 cup chopped walnuts, toasted
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated orange zest

Method
1. Combine sugar, water, port (or wine), cinnamon and nutmeg in a medium nonreactive saucepan; bring to a boil. Add cherries and cook for 1 minute. Stir in cranberries; return to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until about half the cranberries pop, 10 to 12 minutes. Remove from the heat.
2. Stir in walnuts and orange zest. Let cool completely. (The marmalade will thicken as it cools.) Serve at room temperature or chilled.

Roasted Red & Blue Fingerling Potatoes

This is also an accompaniment to the Thanksgiving dinner. I had set the oven to broil to give the potatoes a crispy skin and nice color, but of course I had forgotten about it, hence the dark skin you see in the picture. Nonetheless, it was still yummy.

Simply coat the potatoes (with skin on) in olive oil, salt, pepper and rosemary and toss in the 350 degree pre-heated oven for 1.5 hours, with the Tofurky in it as well. Multi-tasking, baybeh!

Tofurky Celebration Roast

So this is it, the infamous and ever mysterious Tofurky. The instructions came with the box, but I used the baste recipe from Tofurky’s website with a little bit of modification. I had also surrounded the roast with celery and carrots, only to remember that I should have used squash and zuchinni… oh well, there’s always next time

Baste Recipe
3 tablespoons olive oil (or other vegetable oil)
1/8 cup orange juice
1/8 cup soy sauce
1 Tablespoon sweetener of your choice

Method
Thoroughly cover roast and veggies with 1/2 of the baste and pour over thawed roast and veggies.

Cover tightly or wrap tightly in foil and cook in 350F oven for 1 hour & 15 minutes (3 hours and 15 minutes if cooking frozen roast).

Then open foil or casserole and pour remaining baste over roast. Cover and cook for another 10 minutes.

Southern Green Bean Casserole

This was one of the items that accompanied our Tofurky dinner on Thanksgiving Day. The recipe was adapted from Paula’s Home Cooking Show on FoodTV.com.

I had substituted the chicken broth with vegetable broth, and also omitted the use of onions that were cooked with mushroom in butter. I did use French’s Cheddar Fried Onion as sprinkles though. I had also used salt and pepper to season the ingredients instead of making the House Seasoning.

Ingredients
1/3 stick butter
1/2 cup diced onions
1/2 cup sliced fresh mushrooms
2 cups sliced green beans
3 cups chicken broth
1 (10 3/4-ounce) can cream of mushroom soup
1 (2.8-ounce) can French-fried onion rings
Pinch House Seasoning, recipe follows
1 cup grated Cheddar

Method
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Melt the butter in a large skillet. Saute the onions and mushrooms in the butter. Boil green beans in chicken broth for 10 minutes and drain. Add the green beans, mushroom soup, onion rings, and House Seasoning, to taste, to the onion mixture. Stir well. Pour into a greased 1 1/2-quart baking dish. Bake for 20 minutes, then top the casserole with the Cheddar and bake for 10 minutes longer, or until the casserole is hot and cheese is melted.

House Seasoning:
1 cup salt
1/4 cup black pepper
1/4 cup garlic powder