Turkey and Wild Rice Salad with Cranberries and Pecans and Favorite Cookie Recipe!

Are you stuffed with turkey from your Thanksgiving feast and decking the halls?  Turkey and Wild Rice Salad with Cranberries and Pecans is a keeper recipe! It’s healthy, satisfying and a delicious way to enjoy your leftover turkey! You can make it ahead to dish up and have on hand to enjoy when you’re decking the halls or throw it together quickly after your Black Friday shopping. It’s also easy for a quick week night meal with the busy holiday season, substituting a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store for turkey. 

Turkey and Wild Rice Salad with Cranberries and Pecans, adapted from Nigella Christmas

Serves 6 – 8

 You can’t go wrong with these ingredients, adjust the quantities to taste.

Ingredients

2 pkg  (8.8 oz) Uncle Ben’s Long Grain & Wild Ready Rice (ready in 90 seconds) or substitute 4 cups cooked brown or wild rice

3/4 cup dried cranberries

4 cups cold cooked turkey, diced or shredded

2 tablespoons cranberry sauce or *jelly

2 tablespoons lime juice

1/4 cup olive oil

*1 teaspoon sugar  (I used cranberry jelly which was tart, so I added 1 teaspoon sugar to the dressing.)

1/2 cup pecan pieces or halves

1/2 cup chopped baby spinach

Cook rice according to package directions, allow to cool. Add dried cranberries, and diced turkey to cooked rice.

Whisk together the cranberry sauce or jelly, lime juice, oil and sugar for dressing.

Toss the dressing through the rice, cranberries and turkey. Add the pecans to the salad with chopped spinach.

You can find a printable recipe, here.

Turkey and Wild Rice Salad with Cranberries and Pecans is from Nigella Christmas and The Novel Bakers archives, along with a favorite cookie recipe.

“I don’t promise you can cook yourself calm, but I believe it makes sense to snatch moments when you can quietly busy yourself in the kitchen–frankly doing nothing much more effortful than stirring– and give yourself up to the encompassing warmth that comes from a sense of purpose, the benediction of productivity.”

Cranberry and White Chocolate Cookies, Makes about 30 cookies

“…even if you are not usually a white chocolate eater, you will, I think, find these persuasive, perhaps even having to eat a second one straightaway just to make perfectly sure.”

 Ingredients

1 cup all-purpose flour

 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

 1/2 teaspoon salt

 1 cup quick-cooking oats

9 tablespoons (1 stick plus 1 tablespoon) soft butter

 1/2 cup dark brown sugar

 1/2 cup sugar

 1 large egg

 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

 1/2 cup dried cranberries

 1/2 cup pecans, roughly chopped

 3/4 cup white chocolate chips (more if drizzling cookies with melted chocolate)

Preheat oven to 350°F. In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and oats. In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine butter and sugars. Beat until smooth. Add egg and vanilla, and mix again.

Add flour mixture and beat until well blended. Add cranberries, pecans and white chocolate chips, and mix gently until blended. Refrigerate bowl for 10 minutes.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Roll tablespoons of dough into balls, and place them 1 1/2 inches apart on baking sheets. Press each ball gently with a fork to flatten it into a fat disk. Place sheets in oven on two racks. Bake just until cookies are pale gold, about 15 minutes; they will still be soft when hot. Let cookies harden on sheet for 5 minutes, remove to cool on a wire rack.

 Drizzle with melted white chocolate chips if desired. This is a crowd pleasing cookie for your holiday baking or cookie exchange.

You can find a printable recipe, here.

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