Cranberry Pear Sauce

Cranberry sauce out of a can is fine, but cranberry sauce made from fresh cranberries is phenomenal. Thanksgiving wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without cranberry sauce, and I encourage everyone to steer clear of the can. Making fresh cranberry sauce from scratch is so easy! It not only tastes better, but the texture is night and day different from the canned jelly kind and it only takes 15 minutes to make.

I love the pear in this cranberry sauce because the sweetness of the pear balances the tartness of the cranberry. I also added honey to sweeten it up a little more, but you could use Splenda or Truvia instead if you want to save some calories. Whatever you decide to do, I promise you’ll want to make this more often than late November.

Sweet, tart, and totally delicious. I could eat this year-round.

What you’ll need:
12 ounces fresh cranberries
2 ripe pears, cubed
1/2 cup honey
1 cup water

What you’ll need to do:

Bring all the ingredients to a boil in a medium pot. After the mixture reaches a boil, reduce the heat and simmer until the cranberries burst and the sauce thickens, or for about 15 minutes. Stir occasionally.

Remove from heat and let it cool before refrigerating. The sauce will thicken as it cools. Serve chilled or at room temperature.

It’s that easy! Enjoy!

Green Apple, Cranberry, and Feta Salad

Have you ever been invited to a BBQ or potluck last-minute and thought, “Shoot, what am I going to bring?” Sure, you can bring a bottle of wine or beer AGAIN, but you don’t want to be THAT person that only ever brings the booze. You want to bring something tasty, something that will make people want to keep inviting you back, and you don’t want that something to be store-bought. Well, that situation happened to me recently when I ran into a neighbor who said, “Oh hey, we’re going to BBQ at the pool tonight, do you want to join us?” That BBQ was to start in one hour.

With SeaJetCook’s reputation on the rise, I knew I couldn’t bring just a 6-pack of beer. But I had nothing in my fridge that I could throw together for a big group of people (I normally cook for a group of two). So I ran to the market and grabbed ingredients that would create a SeaJetCook-worthy salad in about 5 minutes – very little chopping involved.

Gotta love any dish that only takes 5 minutes to make.

What you’ll need:
1 16 ounce pack of mixed greens (if you can get already washed greens, even better)
1 cup dried cranberries
1 6 ounce pack of crumbled feta cheese
2 green apples

What you’ll need to do:

Chop your apples to about the same size chunks as the large chunks in your feta cheese (you’ll want to get all components on a fork for a perfect bite). Then dump your mixed greens in a large salad bowl. Add in your cranberries, feta cheese, and chopped apples. Toss, and you’re done! Add any dressing you like; this blush vinaigrette is my favorite, but a raspberry vinaigrette would also be tasty.

I love how simple this is because it involves very little chopping (that’s the most time-consuming part of any salad). But whenever I bring this dish to a potluck, no one ever leaves enough for leftovers! The creaminess of the feta and sweetness of the cranberries complement the crisp, tartness of the green apple. Enjoy!