But what do you do when it is so blasted hot outside that you don’t even want to go near your kitchen? Ok, that’s almost a lie. I want to go near my kitchen. I want to be in it and bake cup cakes and get ready for my friends party, I want to bake bread, make soup, make veggie rolls! Alas, in this heat it is not even a sane consideration.

Though there is one thing I love having this time of year: salad. Its nice and cold, easy to prepare in a hot house.

Growing up I was a horribly picky eater. My salads would consist of iceberg lettuce, croutons, thousand island dressing, and cheese. I never touched a tomato, sweet sliced beets, or glanced at any other salad dressings. That is what my parents ate, so that is what I ate.

Incredibly boring if you ask me. My tastes have expanded hugely since then. I now love darker lettuce and spinach, I actually tried Ranch dressing, and oohh tomatoes I love you.

I’ve also gone down another road of my insanity in the kitchen by making my own salad dressing. The original recipe I found for this used fresh cranberries. Not only did the color of the dressing become this neon pink-red color, but it was the most tart and disgusting thing I had ever eaten. It was close in gag factor as pickles.

I HATE pickles. Seriously hate them.

So I decided to use sweetened dried cranberries instead. They are much easier to find year round and the sweetness really takes the edge off of the tart cranberry flavor. Now this is the only dressing I use while at home. I still get ranch when I go out, but this is my favorite hands down. Soaking the cranberries before blending makes them soft and smooth in the dressing, and soaking also helps to get rid of some of the sweetness from the drying process.

At least that’s what I tell myself.

Part of me gets slightly weirded out that I’m eating pink dressing, but that’s my own personal… Interesting-ness.

Cranberry Vinaigrette
Makes 2 cups

• 1/2 cup sweetened dried cranberries
• 1 cup hot water
• 1/3 cup red wine vinegar
• 2/3 cup olive oil
• 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/4 cup water

1. In a small bowl, combine the dried cranberries and hot water until the cranberries become soft, about 15 minutes. Drain and discard water.
2. In a blender combine the vinegar, oil, cranberries, mustard, garlic, salt, pepper, and water. Process until smooth.

I think it has something to do with the fact that now my random craving/want has changed from chocolate. Now, its cream cheese. It’s really random to have that switch, but I’ve done worse.

My absolute favorite thing to have in the morning now is cream cheese and cranberry sauce on ciabatta bread.

It’s love. Really. It is.

But back to the sandwich. The funny part about this sandwich is that I was trying to copy something I had gotten off of a Roach Coach that comes by early in the morning at work. They have a sandwich very similar to what I made and somehow I became addicted to it in the early morning hours of work.

The bottom bread layer has a light dusting of mayo, while the top is cream cheese and cranberry sauce, with lettuce and turkey sandwiched between the two layers of heaven.

But mine tastes a whole lot better.

I love having the ciabatta bread since the cream cheese can get stuck in the little pockets and you bite into the sandwich to get a nice blast of cream cheese randomly throughout. I think this would taste a lot better with real roasted turkey instead of the lunch meat stuff, but its really just too dang hot to roast some turkey right now. I’ll just wait for Thanksgiving or some other turkey prevalent holiday.

So when I discovered this I knew I had to start making changes to my diet. Mostly to make things at home that I can cut back the sugar on. One random thing that I’ve been craving is a Cranberry Turkey Sandwich. They sell them on the break trucks that come by my work early in the mornings, which strikes me as weird since I’m trying to copy something off of a roach-coach.

One of the main ingredients to the sandwich I’m trying to make is cranberry sauce, obviously. Unfortunately most of the store bought varieties are VERY sweet. So I decided to make my own!

Cranberry sauce is VERY simple. Cook berries in liquid until bursting and add sugar. Most people cook them in water or juice, I decided to go with unsweetened, unfiltered gala apple juice. That in itself is quite sweet so I knew I would have to cut back on the sugar, and I did by almost a half cup. The apple juice also added a very subtle note of apple in the background of the tart cranberries. You can also use orange juice instead.

It was quite fun, realizing that strange popping noise I heard while cleaning up was my berries exploding and releasing all of their deliciousness into the pot.

And then, because that’s how I roll, I decided I want to have a nice, almost smooth consistency for spreading over my sandwiches. So in comes the masher, and I mashed away for a while, making sure I got EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM!!!!!! *evil laughter*

Yeah don’t mind the crazy lady doing her crazy laughter in the corner. She’ll calm down eventually. I never have actually used my masher for mashed potatoes, only for anything BUT potatoes.

I also really love the colors that my spoon started turning while I made this, also delicious to lick the spoon too!

In the end I was left with the wonderful cranberry sauce/jelly. I think I will also have to start using this on some bagels with cream cheese! Its sufficiently tart and sweet at the same time. Yum!

Cranberry Sauce
Makes 2 cups

• 12 ounces frozen or fresh cranberries
• 1 cup apple juice
• 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons granulated sugar (up to 1 cup depending on what type of juice you use)

1. In a medium sized pot add the cranberries and juice.
2. Bring to a simmer and wait for the berries to start popping and have completely popped, about 10 minutes.
3. For a smoother consistency mash with a potato masher or puree in a blender.
4. Add the sugar and test for sweetness, add more if needed.
5. Let the sauce come to room temperature before storing in the fridge, it will thicken as it stands.

Does that make me less of a woman?

When looking at a dessert or something sweet, I never really went for the chocolate. Sure there was the required Snickers bar in the morning during high school for about a month, or the Peanut Butter Cup that has been warmed in the window on a hot summer day and melted to the point where you have to lick it out of the cup. But beyond that not really a chocolate person.

I went on a chocolate kick a few months ago. I had to have good quality dark chocolate every day after lunch at work. To me, it was a strange habit. To my coworker who has a “chocolate emergency kit” in her desk, not so much.

I’m pretty much over my chocolate cravings. Except for one thing. Hot Fudge Sauce on ice cream.

I guess I’m a bit of a chocolate snob since I only want the best tasting chocolate, so not any store bought will do. After making the ice cream sandwiches and dipping them in chocolate, we had a LOT of chocolate left over and I tried making a sauce from it. I think though I only was able to make it into more of a ganache. While tasty, it just wasn’t what I wanted.

Then comes Smitten Kitchen. I found her site… somehow. I was probably link jumping among the other cooking blogs I look at and found her.

But I love her.

Why do I love her? Not only is she a great story teller, a fantastic photographer, a great cook and just darn cute?

She makes hot fudge sauce from scratch! Be still my beating heart. I drooled over her pictures for days, then got distracted but some other shiny object and forgot about it.

Then a few days ago at the store I knew there was a reason for me to get unsweetened chocolate, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was. I bought it anyways and left it sitting on the counter for a day. Then it came to me. HOT FUDGE SAUCE! I knew I had to do it.

And I did. It was the greatest thing to have the smell of the dark chocolate going through the house. It was also rather weird because I was also in the middle of making sour cream enchiladas at the same time. Enchiladas and dark chocolate. Weird.

It turned out fantastic. Dark, fudgy, chewy when it hit the ice cream, a little on the bitter side, and made my heart squeal with joy. It was also great just eating the stuff out of the pot. It’s also glorious to have a small spoonful out of the jar in the fridge (and yes I had a small bite before I made breakfast this morning.)

Normally I would re-type the recipe and show any changes I made to it. However, I didn’t make any changes and I respect Smitten Kitchen a whole lots (plus shes awesome) so I’m not going to re-post it. You can get to her recipe for it here. What can I say, I respect the sauce.