One of our new favorite Thanksgiving recipes is this cranberry relish. Vickey found it in a Thanksgiving Taste of Home magazine. It was delicious yesterday on our Thanksgiving turkey.

Ingredients

1 ¼ cups sugar
½ cup water
1 package (12 ounces) fresh or frozen cranberries
2 large tart apples, peeled and finely chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
½ cup golden raisins
½ cup packed brown sugar
¼ cup apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
½ cup chopped walnuts, toasted

Directions

In a large saucepan over medium heat, bring sugar and water to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, for 3 minutes.

Stir in cranberries, apples, onion, raisins, brown sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, salt, allspice and cloves.

Return to a boil. Reduce heat: simmer, uncovered for 25-30 minutes or until desired thickness, stirring occasionally.

Just before serving, stir in toasted walnuts.

Serve warm or cold.

Other Ideas

This makes a good appetizer when spooned over room-temperature cream cheese and served with crackers.

You can also mix the chutney with cream cheese for a day-after-Thanksgiving turkey sandwich spread. Or, thin the spread with sour cream or yogurt to use as a dip.

This November my family was featured in the Las Vegas Italian-American community newspaper, La Voce.

The center pages are ours, titled La Mia Famiglia, Past Present & Future — The Codella Family.

My friend is the editor for La Voce and asked us in October if we would be willing to be the featured family for the paper’s Thanksgiving issue. It sounded like a fun honor.

So we gathered some photos with the help of my mom and Aunt Betty, submitted them with captions, and are the proud recipients of a center spread in the newspaper.

Below are some images of the newspaper pages and here’s a link to view a PDF of the two pages.

La Mia Famiglia - the Codella family

La Mia Famiglia - the Codella family

We spent the weekend with Vickey’s parents and enjoyed their company, and the company of Vickey’s brother, Charley. Vickey’s nephew, Casey, also joined us for Thanksgiving dinner, but had to run to hang with his cronies after we ate.

Thanksgiving dinner was served around 1 p.m. on Thursday and we ate and ate. The food was fabulous. So were the leftovers later that night, and the next day, and today!

Here’s a photo of our Thanksgiving dinner table, believe it or not, before most of the food was brought downstairs and placed on the table.

Here’s a picture of everyone getting ready for the big meal (from left to right: Vickey, Gordon, Casey, Murriel and Charley).

Our original plan was to spend Wednesday evening at the Snows since Eliana was off school that day, but Dominic managed to succumb to the family cold on Wednesday and had a fever of 103. He was not a happy camper. Even Thursday morning he wasn’t doing that well, but we decided to go to grandma and grandpa’s anyway, mostly because Dominic was with Grandpa Snow all day on Tuesday, so if anyone was going to be exposed to the cold, it would have happened Tuesday. Our fingers are crossed for you Grandpa!

Dominic was pretty much better by today, but he’s sure a whinny sicko. It wasn’t much fun to be around him on Wednesday and Thursday.

We both talked to our other siblings and parents who weren’t with us on Thanksgiving. All in all, we all have much to be grateful for. Our families are blessed.

We’re particularly grateful to be in our new environment and to have our home sold in Henderson, where, by some estimates, the property values have declined by 20% over the past year. We’re certainly looking forward to some positive changes in our economy.

We’re thankful for good family and friends and many rich and rewarding relationships.

We’re especially grateful for the hand of the Lord in our lives. We know He has watched for and guided us, even though usually not on our time table. And we’re better for having exercised faith and trusted in His plan for us.

We hope those we love, appreciate and admire have a wonderful, safe, happy and healthy holiday season.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!