This video is my favorite recipe for Cranberry Relish. I have made this recipe, and used this video for the last two years. Its an easy recipe that can be done in a matter of minutes, and the relish is the bomb on turkey sandwiches.

The cranberry relish is the only item I am allowed to make for thanksgiving. What does it take
Cranberry Relish Recipe:
-2 cups of rinsed raw cranberries
-1 quartered seedless orange with skin.
-1/2 cup of honey

Watch the video to learn the specifics of making the cranberry relish and to see a bit of info on the fabulous cranberry and be sure to stop off at PAllenSmith.com for more awesome recipes.

A quick kitchen counter cleaning tip for you.

Since the leaky wine box left a stain on our white counter top, I had been looking for alternatives to get the red wine stain off  my counter. I did not want to use bleach or comet as I don’t like the idea of  using harsh chemicals on my counter.

This morning on the Philly 29 news, Jennaphr Fredrick, interviewed someone from Kiwimagazine suggested using an cleanser made from cream of tartar and water. After the morning news was over, we made a paste and scrubbed lightly with a paper towel and the stain came right off.

Looking back, you can see that we have been drinking wine more regularly due to my wife’s Mediterranean Diet. Since we are drinking a glass nightly, we decided it would be more economical to buy boxed wine instead of just buying tons of bottles of wine. Don’t get me wrong, we still buy bottles of wine because they are so fun, but bottles are for special occasions.

Anyway, since we are going to be drinking more wine, and box wine is such a great deal, I decided to start doing reviews of boxed wines and comparing the newest box wine to the previous box wine.

Unless the wine is terrible, I generally will not give it a bad rating.  To be honest, I am not much of a wine connoisseur, so you may not want to follow my suggestions.  On the other hand, if I don’t like a wine, you can be pretty certain that it bites.  My wife and I tend to drink dry reds, favoring Cabernet, Pinot Noir, Shiraz wine varieties and the like.

In the last Box Wine Review post, I reviewed the Pinot Evil Pinot Noir vs Hardy’s Cabernet Sauvignon.  To be fair, I should probably state that I did not do a side by side comparison. But I do remember the Hardy’s being very spicy, especially towards the end of the box when a bit of settling of sediments had occurred.  Either wine, I feel would be a fine wine to have around the house.

What I would like to address in this post, more so is the actual spigot that comes with the Octavin Wine Bar which is the box for the Pinot Evil.

The picture above is of the Pinot Evil box wine that we started drinking less than a week ago. At this point in time, we had maybe a half dozen glasses out of the box. As you can clearly see, dripping saturated the bottom of the box, and left a nasty stain on my white counter top.

Having had these types of  box wines before, I am very careful to get the very last drop. And usually, I tip the box on its side like it is in the picture, but on this one occasion, we forgot to tip the box, and the result was the stained counter and saturated wine box.

I also want to inform you the reader, that the twist cap type of dispenser, is not the only type of box wine dispenser on the market. In fact, the previous wine, the Hardy’s Cab, had a push button spigot, that did not so much as leave a single red wine drip on our counter.

Box Wine Design Change Required

I am going to suggest to the people at the Octavin Wine Bar that they either put a warning on the box to make sure that the cap is completely turned shut, or that they should adopt the push button spigot design instead.

VS

Had it not been for the poor spigot, on the Pinot Evil, my wife and I would probably have favored the Pinot Evil over the Hardy’s. But alas, the Hardy’s wins because of the container design.
Both wines come in at just under $20 usd, so for about $5 a bottle, you can’t go wrong…that is unless you don’t want red wine drip stains all over your white counter top.