Thanksgiving with Relish

Thanksgiving is on the horizon, and I’m putting together the shopping list for the annual feast.  It is funny how some meals become so tied to tradition.  Certain holidays, like Thanksgiving just have so much tradition and memory.  Perhaps there is a desire to keep the connection with the past or perhaps it is rather a desire to have a familiar moment in the year as we face so many challenges.  I understand that many have memories of Rosh Hashanah, “Of course there is a brisket”, or other holiday meals.  In our house it was Thanksgiving.

Since we ate at home so rarely common meals at home were fancy with Spanish foods or perhaps Middle Eastern fare.  However, for Thanksgiving it was pure (US) American tradition.   Our meals usually were:

• Turkey (of course)
• Stuffing
• Whipped mashed potatoes
• Sweet potato/yams with marshmallows
• Green beans with slivered almonds
• Cranberry Walnut Relish
• Pearled onions in cream sauce (no we didn’t keep Kosher, and no I never ate this.)
• Pecan Pie
• Pumpkin Pie

The Thanksgiving meal I make is usually similar to the above, without the onions and usually only pumpkin pie.  The cranberry relish became a family tradition and probably was clipped from some recipe section in some newspaper.  My grandmother liked it so much she asked for the recipe and made a very interesting variation on it, but that’s a family story I’ll skip for this year.  I mentioned the cranberry relish on Twitter and some folks thought it sounded good, so I thought I’d post the recipe here.  It’s super easy to make and really quite yummy.  Usually I have it on toast for quite some time after Thanksgiving, and somehow it is only made for Thanksgiving.   Without much more ado, here is the recipe:

Baked Cranberry-Walnut Relish

1lb cranberries
2 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup coarsely broken walnuts
1 cup tart orange marmalade
Juice of 1 lemon or lime

Wash & drain the cranberries.
Put in a shallow baking pan & stir in sugar.
Cover tightly with lid or foil and bake in a moderate ove (350º F) 1 hr.
Put walnuts on a tray and in the same oven to toast during the last 10 minutes of baking
Add walnuts & remaining ingredients to cranberries.
Mix well & chill.

Enjoy!