Thanksgiving Stuffing Waffles!

So when you've got a lot of these in your backyard...

You get a craving a make a scaled down version of a Thanksgiving feast, even though it's March.  Here's the turkey coming out of the oven...no no, it's not one of the wild turkeys.  Promise.  ;-)  It was, however, the smallest turkey I've ever cooked, coming in at 9.8lbs!

And then, even with a scaled down version of a Thanksgiving feast, there's still the leftovers to contend with.  We are NOT letting them go to waste - this is good stuff!  And thanks to our buddy Dave recently sending a link to a yummy idea, we decided we had to make stuffing waffles.

I looked at a number of different recipes out there, and then just summed up what I saw.  You want a finer grain stuffing - not like my usual big-n-chunky, fully of big bread cubes and big veggies and big sausage stuff.  This was a cheater stuffing - I made Stovetop.  (Don't you judge me!!) 

It was perfect for the waffles - we had two cups leftover, to which I added just a little drizzle of water (didn't have any chicken stock on hand), and an egg.  Stirred it all up really well, and put it on the lightly greased waffle iron.  I went with a higher heat/duration setting since this takes a lot longer to cook than your regular batter-based waffles, and you really want to cook that egg in there (which is acting as a binder).

Ok, so maybe this picture isn't so flattering for the waffles:

But let me tell you - they were awesome!  Really good with mashed potatoes, turkey and gravy on top, and a little side of green bean casserole (which is looking gross in the picture above).

And I have to say what really made it was having some cranberries - YUM YUM YUM!  Since fresh cranberries are most definitely out of season in March, and I didn't add any to the freezer this year, I looked around and found a good recipe for using dried cranberries.  It's not quite as tart as using fresh, since most dried cranberries come sweetened, but it was still really really good for dipping the stuffing waffles in.  Sorry - I don't have a picture of the cranberries - just envision a really chunky batch of cooked cranberry sauce.

Cranberry sauce from dried cranberries (I halved this):

• 1 1/2 cups dried craisins
• 3/4 cup water or preferably cranberry juice or pomegranate cran mix (I used cran cherry)
• 1/3 cup sugar
• the zest of one orange
• 1/4 tsp salt

Boil all ingredients until the cranberries are plump and rehydrated. then add 2T of cornstarch to 4T of water and add it slowly while at a slow simmer till it is thick and of the right consistency.  I found I needed to add a little more water near the end, but I was juggling a few things and might've cooked off more of the moisture than originally intended.