Fresh cranberry relish

Couldn't be easier and goes with do many dishes - especially risotto or creamy style noodle casseroles, or millet loaf! Takes basically 10 minutes to put together and needs to chill for an hour or overnight, so it's great to make the day before. I have let this sit since Thanksgiving so even without a photo, I'm posting it! It's so easy and so good!

Fresh cranberry relish

1 bag of fresh cranberries

1 orange - preferably organic so you can use the peeling

1/2 c pecans or almonds

Use a food processor and grind the berries with quartered, seeded orange with peeling and the nuts until all chopped into a consistent texture. It will be fresh and crunchy. We didn't have the requisite orange so we used the inside of one orange and the peeling of an organic clementine - it was great!

Garlic Leek Soup

Cold weather in November and too many hard frosts in a row made it necessary to pull out all the remaining leeks in our small garden. As it turned out, this was way too many leeks to use up fresh so I chopped and froze some for later. I did use a large number of them fresh, along with many heads of homegrown garlic to make this warming, healthy, easy soup. It freezes very well too, and for those who will eat croutons, that dresses things up indeed! We put chopped onion greens on top - or even a drizzle of olive oil if you eat that.

5-6 medium leeks, washed, chopped

4-5 heads of garlic (@25 cloves), peeled & smashed

1 zucchini- chopped

1-2 teaspoons summer savory

1-2tsp dry thyme

1tsp black pepper (add to taste)

1-2 tsp salt (can be added to taste)

3-4 creamy potatoes chopped - Yukon gold or chieftain or other variety 

6-8 cups water 

Prepare leeks - slicing lengthwise to rinse between the layers and get all the dirt out! Cut off the tough dark leaves and save for making some other broth. Chop the more tender white and pale green parts and toss in a large pot with all the peeled garlic, zucchini, potato, herbs, seasonings and water. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for about 20-35 minutes until all is cooked thoroughly. Blenderize or use a wand blender until all is puréed smooth. That's it!

Hummus Taco

Using whatever is in the house is my way of operating. This taco is totally a product of that way of thinking. It made a lovely easy fresh lunch. This means that you, too, can make a fabulous taco lunch practically no matter what you have around for ingredients. This is what happened today and I do recommend it!

Hummus Taco

Corn tortillas (ready made or home made)

Tomatoes - cut into chunks (we used kumatoes, but cherry or grape tomatoes would work)

Avocado - cut into small cubes

Mushrooms sliced thinly and cut into rectangular bits (I used white button mushrooms)

Hummus - ready made or homemade (we used roasted red pepper hummus)

Red pepper chopped in small bits

Hot sauce - your favorite kind

 Put all the cut up ingredients on a large plate. Heat each tortilla about 30 seconds per side over a hot gas burner or in a small nonstick fry pan. Load your taco with the assortment of goodies and enjoy! So simple it almost seems crazy to write this down. It didn't occur to me that I would blog this, so the only picture I have is what was left I my hand when my husband said, "this was so good, you should blog it."