By Judy Woodward
Every month, the reference librarians at the Roseville Library receive dozens of questions from the public. Here is one of the more interesting queries we received recently:
Q. What’s the best thing to do with leftover cranberry sauce?
A. One of the hard parts about holiday meals is that leftovers don’t run out at the same time. It’s three days after Christmas (well OK, maybe five days) and you’ve eaten all the remaining turkey, gravy and stuffing.
But there is that lonely dish of green bean casserole; and what about the jumbo glass bowl of leftover cranberry sauce?
The green beans may be beyond redemption; but there’s plenty of life left in the cranberries. You could freeze the sauce. Fresh cranberries freeze very well. But that just postpones the issue until mid-February or whenever you get around to unfreezing the remains.
Why not try adding a swirl of cranberry sauce to your favorite coffee cake or banana bread recipe? Or, even simpler, buy a plain cheesecake and top it with cranberry sauce. Neither of these options will help with those extra pounds you picked up at Christmas dinner, but they do taste good.
You can find other leftover cranberry suggestions at https://www.allrecipes.com/gallery/leftover-cranberry-sauce-recipes/
For hardcore cranberry fans who may still be experiencing cravings even after the holidays, you might want to take a look at “Cranberries Revealed; a visual journey” by Wayne R. Martin, a photographic essay on cranberries in their natural state—with recipes. You’ll find it at the library!
Judy Woodward, who lives in St. Anthony Park, is a reference librarian at the Roseville Library, 2180 N. Hamline Ave. The library’s general phone number is 651-724-6001.
