 call her Valley Cooks and today we're gonna make a fresh cranberry salad. It is a dish that my Aunt Peggy Howard made every year. It was her specialty and I have gotten her recipe. I'm gonna put a pack of strawberry jello in my bowl and a pack of cranberry jello. Now you can just buy strawberry cran jello but I just buy one of each. Now I just happened to have on hand some fruit juice off of some pineapple and cherries that I drained so I'm gonna use it today. Otherwise you would just use a one and a half cups of boiling water. So what we're going to do is we're gonna put the juice that I have collected off my fruit cooking for the holidays and we're gonna put in all of this and then I'm also going to drain a little bit of this pineapple. This is a large can of pineapple. It is a 20 ounces. Okay and we're gonna use it all. So I'm just gonna smash it some and we're gonna take part of this juice to do our jello with. And you don't have to completely drain it because I mean we are making a salad out of it. Let's take it over here and pour it in until we got a cup and a half. There it is. We're gonna put this in the microwave and we're gonna bring it to a boil. It will probably take at least three three to half minutes to get that to a boil. Once it's boiling we're gonna add it to this. But in the meantime we're gonna chop up some pecans with our chopper. And we do have these. These are expensive but they're they're very sharp and they're really good. Somebody send it to me. And they're on my website. Links. My kitchen you can buy on Amazon and I'd like for you to go through my links because it helps support us. I do when I cut up my pecans shake them. It's a smaller crumb off the bottom so that when the blade hits it it doesn't get it to the people that have a hard time chewing. We do have some of those in the family so think about them as well. So I'm gonna put these pecans in this bowl. You need to do at least a half cup okay for it to be good in your salad. Now we're gonna chop up fresh cranberries and I'm gonna use this to do the cranberries too. So we're just going to chop a whole pound of cranberries in three sections. So if you've got a food processor you could always use it. Works great. Look that was four pools I think. I'm gonna go ahead and throw them in here. They are. Look it's a lot easier to clean this than a food processor. Now I'm gonna chop this celery. It's you know about a half a cup equivalent and I'm gonna chop it and then we're gonna put it in there and chop it a little bit more. Like this has come to a boil. I'm gonna let it boil just a little bit more. Leave it in there the whole three and a half minutes. I gotta get my blade in here. Stir it into our jello and cranberries. I'm gonna mix it up good. Now you're supposed to add a cup and a half of sugar but because I'm using fruit juice that's already sweetened I'm just going to use I've got to decide. I'm gonna put in a half cup and taste it before I decide how much sugar I'm putting in it since I'm using fruit juice. Okay now if you use water you can just use the cup and a half of sugar or you can reduce it if you've got a diabetic or use some Splenda. I think that's gonna be enough sugar for us. So let's chop these up. An apple juice too as well. An orange. That'll be the last ingredient y'all. Some people like to top their cranberry salad with a cream cheese mixture on top but we just never did that growing up and this is what our family made. So I'm giving you a family recipe. My Aunt Peggy always made it. Peggy Howard for the family. This was her dish every year. So I'm just peeling an orange. This is a navel orange. Get you a nice big navel orange so that you got lots of pulp to go in your salad. It's easy to cut up. It'll be tasty in our cranberry salad. So we're gonna put this in our little chopper too. To something in the kitchen this year get you one of these choppers. Sure has made life easier because then you don't have to change out, change out, change out while you're making your salad. Now I'm gonna get out some lemon and I'm just gonna put a little lemon rind in it to make it good and then all you gotta do is pour it up and chill it and it's ready to serve. You always want to make this the day ahead. Just gonna zest a little bit of lemon zest in here just to give it some added flavor. When you zest a lemon you do not want to get down into the white pulp part or it'll be better but as long as you stay on this outside it adds a nice flavor to your desserts. A little hint of acid. I would so you can have the recipe if you'd like. We do this chill it and it will set up to the jello will set up in it. Okay because we used fresh fruit juice today to make this salad instead of using one and one half cups of water and one and one half cups of sugar. I used all sweetened fruit juice with one half cup of sugar. So just remember that if you're going to substitute the water for juice and it's sweetened then you need to reduce the sugar in your salad. You can always taste it while you're mixing it up and tell if it's plenty sweet enough. I mean if you're putting in a whole jar of pineapples like I did that adds a lot of sugar just there. So just give it a taste and it should be delicious. Thanks for watching Colored Valley Cooks where we cook like