cranberry nut bread~

The fall season is here in full bloom ~ the air is crisp ~ the green leaves are turning to their brilliant colors of red, orange and gold.  It puts me into the mode of a chipmunk... harvest and store away for the winter months to come.  

Besides all my canning of veggies and fruits ~ I like to make bread.  It's so nice on a cold wintry day to be able to go and pull a loaf of bread from the freezer for a quick dessert in the hubby's lunch box or an afternoon snack when the grandloves are here after school.  

Yesterday I made up four loaves of Cranberry Nut Bread.  (recipe below x's 4) This bread is full of fresh chopped cranberries with chopped walnuts and the tangy taste of orange.   It's a very pretty bread ~ looks great served on a special tray at Christmas time with it's festive colors. 

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CRANBERRY NUT BREAD

350°  50 minutes  1 loaf

Ingredients:

2 Cups Flour

3/4 Cup Sugar

3/4 tsp. salt

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1 Cup chopped fresh cranberries

1/2 Cup chopped walnuts

1 whole Egg

2 Tblsp. vegetable oil

3/4 Cup orange juice

1 Tblsp. orange zest

Step By Step

1.  Preheat oven.  Grease and flour a 9x5 loaf pan.

2.  In a large mixing bowl combine all the dry ingredients... flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda

3.  In a blender give the cranberries a quick pulse to chop.

4.  Add the chopped cranberries, walnuts, egg, oil, orange juice and orange zest to the dry mixture.

Mix well.  Pour into loaf pan and bake 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Cool in the loaf pan 10 minutes before removing from pan on to a wire rack.  Cool completely before slicing.

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Good news on the home front ~ my printer is working again! Yeah!!  I bought a new printer last May and had to change out my cartridges for the first time about 2 weeks ago.  I couldn't get the darn ink cartridges to snap in right... it was so frustrating.  I even went to the support web site for advice... but they never got back to me.  So... yesterday I call the store where I bought the printer and told them the problem.  Of course, I couldn't find the receipt or the original box for the printer... but the store said to bring it in anyways and they could scan the sku's and find out if I had any kind of warranty on it yet.

Well... as my luck would have it... the warranty had expired.  Now here I am with a brand new printer that I can't get the ink cartridge to work in.  bummer...  I was ready to pitch the whole thing in the dumpster.  Then... my daughter says she'll take a look at it.  Within 2 seconds she had the cartridges in and had it working!!  What the heck!!!...  here all along... me the dumb blonde... yep... I'm calling myself that... was trying to put the ink cartridge in the wrong way... like I did on my old printer.  I felt about 2 inches high.  Thank you Staci for bringing sanity back to me... I really thought I was losing it when it came to this... my brain just did not register what I was doing wrong.  Ahh... the joys of getting old and taking too many prescription pills.

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I had a nice surprise visit this morning from my nephew Nate and his little guy Sean.  I told him to wave at the camera so I could show him to his G'ma Cher and G'pa Thom ... once I bribed him with fruit rings and an old toy truck from the toy box ... I got the shot.  lol  Sean says HI

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Until next time...

So it goes in my neck of the woods.

~mel