Homemade Cranberry Sauce

Since it's the holiday season, I wanted to share one of my favorite holiday recipes: cranberry sauce!  In our family, this is more traditional for Thanksgiving, but this is easily a Yule-season dish too.  And honestly, this is so delicious, I could eat it year-round!  Om nom nom.

I perfected this recipe in 2011, and have brought it to my family's Thanksgiving dinner every year since.  Please note this cranberry sauce uses about half the sugar of most recipes, so it is tart - add more (or less) sugar and/or apples to adjust the sweetness.  

This recipe is super easy, and much healthier than BPA-laden canned sauce.  And, you know, not creepily shaped like a can.  Also, you can easily double, triple, or even quadruple the recipe.  I usually bring a double batch for our 30- to 50-person family Thanksgiving dinner (yes, you read that right.  My extended family is huge!)

Ingredients:

1 bag of fresh cranberries

1/2 cup of sugar

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup orange juice

1/2 apple, peeled and chopped finely

1/4 - 1/2 tsp cloves (you can use ground cloves, but go light)

1-2 tsp. cinnamon, or to taste

1-2 tsp. ginger, or to taste

1/2 tsp. fresh orange zest or valencia orange peel from the spice aisle, or to taste

Instructions:

~ In a pot, bring the water and orange juice to boil, then stir to dissolve the sugar in the water.

~ Turn heat to medium-high, and add the cranberries.  Let them simmer until they start popping (about 10 minutes).

~ Turn the heat down to medium-low.  Add the apple, cinnamon, ginger, and orange zest.

~ Put the cloves in a tea strainer or tie them up in a cheese cloth, and immerse in the sauce.

~ Let this all simmer for about 10-20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the cranberries are falling apart.

~ Mash the cranberries and apples with a fork or potato masher to desired consistency.

~ Move the pot off the heat and let it cool for at least 10-15 minutes before serving or moving to a container for transport.  Make sure to remove the bag of cloves before serving.  I find it's best served at about room temperature or slightly warm, especially if serving over turkey. 

Enjoy!!  I like to eat mine on turkey at Thanksgiving, but it's also good on crackers and fresh bread.

Bittersweet Easter

Last night some of us from my Mom's side of the family met at Mom-Mom & Pop-Pop's house down the shore for Easter dinner.  It was bittersweet, because Mom-Mom & Pop-Pop have decided to sell the house and move to a smaller ranch home in a retirement community nearby.  So it was the last formal family dinner at the house they've owned for about 30 years, and lived in full-time for 20 years.

The house is huge, with 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, long dining room and a really big rec-room they added on when I was a teenager.  When we were younger, there would often be weekends where the house was full of aunts and uncles and cousins.  And there was always good food contributed by all.

When I walk in that house I hear my aunts and I shouting and laughing over a game of Double Solitaire, which more often than not ended with my Aunt Dot triumphantly going "out" and winning.  I smell all of the summer breakfasts of pancakes and scrapple and bacon that Mom-Mom cooked.  I see Easter baskets for all the cousins covering the dining room table, and beach towels and bathing suits hung willy-nilly in the bathrooms after a long, sandy day at the beach.  I feel love. 

So much love.

It feels like home.

I thought they were being pressured by someone in the family to move "for their own good."  I was also worried that they were moving because they didn't know about all of the resources they could take advantage of (often paid for by Medicare) such as a home aide and a stair lift.  But after talking to them yesterday it seems apparent that it is their choice to downsize, that they would feel old and trapped by them rather than freed.

I'm going to try to go down there In June for one last long vacation down the shore, just me and the grandparents, and lots of beach time.  And when it's time for them to move, I'll go help - but I'm not sure I'll be able to hold it together (just writing this I'm crying).

Maybe the next time I'm there, I can bring home some part of that house - some stones from the yard, or a piece of wicker furniture maybe? - so that I always have that piece of my shore "home" in my own home.