Dried Cranberry

Here, I’ve created my version of sweet potato pie, but it’s not as heavy and not as sweet. The cranberry foam gives a nice added pop of acidity.

You may want to prepare this meal quite often—not just for the holidays—when you see how easy it is.

This sweet-hot slaw gets its “attitude” from a combination of several highly flavored ingredients.

Gina: Ours is a spinach salad with some serious attitude. In addition to the bacon and creamy blue cheese dressing, we add sweetened pecans and tart dried cranberries, and the overall effect is to give this salad a festive feel. It’s a great dinner party starter, and it’s especially good partnered with a fat grilled steak. The spiced pecans are good enough to eat on their own as a snack, but try to save them for the salad! And even though we call for dried cranberries, you can substitute a variety of dried fruit, including dried cherries or golden raisins.

Oregon on a plate: From Willamette Valley Pinot Noir to cranberry bogs and filbert trees, this menu celebrates one great state!

Served in its shell, this makes a dramatic presentation as part of a winter meal.

Here is a fantastic coffee cake that tastes like gingerbread: perfect for cold days or nights.

Dried cranberries, widely available today, fleck the texture of this bread. If you use fresh berries that were frozen, be sure they are at room temperature because frozen berries affect the baking time. Toast the walnuts while preheating the oven.

There isn’t much difference in baking time between convection and regular ovens when you bake scones, only 5 to 10 minutes. The difference is in the wonderful texture, moist tender crumb, and golden, delicate crust that you can expect from the convection oven.

This simple recipe might well replace a turkey for a special holiday meal. The even browning that the convection oven offers and repeated basting with the slightly spicy glaze guarantee beautifully burnished, succulent little birds.

Find sources for local ground turkey at LocalHarvest.org and conserve fossil fuels that get burned during shipping.

I especially enjoy the food blog www.deliciousdays.com. Recently I saw a recipe for a wheat-based muesli bread on that site and used it as inspiration for this nutty, sweet fruit loaf. When I want a healthy treat for dinner, I toast a slice and spread it with goat cheese.

Guests won't leaf these alone! A yogurt dressing and plenty of produce keep the tangy mouthfuls light.

This spinach salad speaks to all the wonderful autumnal flavors of the Pacific Northwest. The new crop of bronzed Bosc pears is piled high at the farmers' market; the hazelnuts have been harvested, shelled, and bagged for sale; and the cranberries arrive from the Long Beach, Washington, coastal bogs. I buy sweetened dried cranberries from a local producer, but they are readily available at the grocery store (Ocean Spray is a good-quality packager), found alongside raisins and other dried fruits. This salad is a snap to assemble if you buy the packaged prewashed and trimmed baby spinach.

All the other kids at school will be jealous when they get a look at these delicious, colorful, healthful wraps.

For chewy texture, undercook the biscotti slightly in the second baking.

Add broth 1/4 cup at a time, stirring, to avoid sogginess.

Garlicky kale, a robust winter green, gains an unexpected twist with dried cranberries' saucy hits of tartness.

If your dried cranberries aren't plump and moist, cover them with boiling water and let soak for 5 minutes. Drain them and pat dry before using. If you prefer, walnuts or hazelnuts can be substituted for the pecans.

With their ruby cranberries and glittering sugar edges, these cookies look labor-intensive. But they're actually a host's best friend — keep the dough in your fridge, and they can be baked and served in half an hour.

Editor's note: The recipe below is from Ming Tsai's book, Ming's Master's Recipes. Use 1 cup of glaze as a dipping sauce for Ming Tsai's pork potstickers and cranberry-crab rangoons and the other cup to make his braised short ribs.

Editor's note: This recipe is from Ming Tsai's book, Ming's Master Recipes.