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.

The Most Important Harvest

Happy Thanksgiving!  I have a chant to share with you all.  It is both a Samhain chant and a Thanksgiving chant that I wrote it several years ago as part of a Sabbat series.

Nom nom pumpkin bread!  It's a traditional part of Thanksgiving dinner in our family.

The words for this chant came straight out of a dream, in which I was saying the mealtime prayer at Thanksgiving dinner with my family - because, you know, my traditional Catholic family would ask a female neopagan to say the mealtime prayer :)  The idea of family and its love being the "most important harvest" was key to the dream.  Samhain is the last harvest - my dream (and, I am sure, Hecate, who gave me a serious chant-writing kick in the butt at that year's Hecate ritual) was telling me that all the crops and other things we harvest in the autumn are not nearly as important as the love and fellowship we "harvest" in our family (however we choose to define that family).  Since Samhain, for me and seemingly for many others, seems to be about ancestors/family, this kind of chant seemed very appropriate for the holiday as well as for Thanksgiving.




Most Important Harvest

Look around,
Holding hands - feel the connection between you.
We are all bound by blood and by choice.
This family is the most important "season,"

And its love is the most important "harvest."

Please let me know what you think!

You are free to share my post and use my chants in ritual - and I would love to know that you do!  But please do not reproduce my chants in any way without permission.