And she’s back after quite a long absence. 2012 was an incredibly busy year work, meaning I had little to no time to work. And even after thing the election, (I work on voting rights) it took me a while to get back in the groove of cooking and I wasn’t in the mood to blog. But I am back and I am starting off something I made for Thanksgiving (yup way back).

Thanksgiving was the first time I really cook after I arose from my post-Election haze. I found a recipe for polenta triangles after sifting through my backlog of Google Reader. I added a cranberries and goat cheese to the recipe to change it up.

Ingredients
8 ounces your favorite pork sausage (I like pork sausage with sage)
3/4 cup finely chopped yellow onion
1/2 cup dried cranberries
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 cups water
1 1/4 cups 1%-2% milk (I used 2%)
1 cup instant polenta
1/2 cup crumbled goat cheese
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions
Heat a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add sausage; cook until brown using spatula to break up the sausage into crumbles. In a separate skillet sauté onion and garlic until vegetables are tender. Add veggie to sausage and set aside.

Add 1 1/2 cups water and milk to sausage mixture in pan, and bring to a boil. Gradually add polenta, stirring constantly with a whisk. Stir in salt. Cook for 3 minutes or until thick, stirring constantly.

Spoon polenta into a glass or ceramic dish. Cool to room temperature. Add cranberries and goat cheese, mixing well. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Cut the chilled polenta into squares and then cut each polenta square diagonally into triangles. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat with olive oil. Place triangles into pan, cook for 2 minutes on each side or until browned.

Food for Thought:
-I added cranberries to sweeten the dish and goat cheese because it is delicious.
-I used 2% instead of skim like the recipe asks because I think skim milk tastes like water (aka gross).
-Adding the goat cheese made them a bit more crumbly so next time I will add a little more polenta.
-I also found that mixing the polenta with the sausage mixture made it harder to get rid of the clumps so next time I will cook the polenta and then add the sausage.