Cranberries for the Holidays!

Well, HELLO everyone! After a six-month blog hiatus, I'm back! And, in my opinion, it's a great time for sharing cooking and craft ideas, and I think you'll agree.

A friend of mine in the pacific northwest told me that she was awash in cranberries and that prompted this post. I know most of you are familiar with the divine pairing of cranberry sauce and turkey and on this day, Thanksgiving, that is what many of you will be having. (And for those of us who are vegetarian, we just let our cranberry sauce co-mingle with our various other Thanksgiving foods on our plate -- or at least I do!). So, today I am going to post a recipe for cranberry sauce, and this is not your gelatinous can-shaped standard, which, of course, has its own place in many people's hearts. Today's cranberry sauce recipe is a fresher, sometimes looser, citrus-and-spice affair, and I hope you love it.

Ingredients:
2 pounds fresh cranberries
2 cups water
2 cups white sugar
grated rind of half an orange
.5 to 1 tsp ground cloves (per your taste)
.5 to 1 tsp ground cinnamon (per your taste)
A pinch of salt

Method:
Boil the water in a large saucepan. Once the water has reached a rolling boil, add the cranberries. Once the boiling point has been reached again, cover the pot and let the cranberries boil for several minutes until they begin to pop. Then, stir in the sugar, the spices, and the salt. Boil mixture uncovered until the liquid reaches the "jelly" point (when a spoon-dip's-worth of the syrup "sheets" off of the spoon). To reach the jelly point, you might need to boil the mixture for twenty minutes or so.

While you are waiting for the mixture to reach the jelly point, you can prepare your glass jars to can the sauce (if you plan to can some jars for use later; if you don't, you'll just put the completed sauce is glass containers of your choice to store in the refrigerator). To can, first fill a boiling-water canner (or a big stock pot) with water and bring to a boil. Place your glass Mason jars in the canner to sterilize them in the boiling water. Have your lids and rings clean and ready to go. Once your cranberry mixture is ready to your liking, plop the lids and bands into the boiling water in the canner to sterilize them. Let them boil for a minute or two. Take out the glass jars; set them on a clean tea-towel. Place a round cake-cooling rack (if you have one) in the bottom of the canner for the jars to sit on while they're processing (if you have one; this is not necessarily required).

Next, using a sterilized metal funnel, ladle (with a sterilized metal ladle) the sauce into the hot glass jars. Leave a bit of head-space. Place the lids on top of the jars and then screw on the bands. Place the jars in the boiling water in the canner (carefully, with tongs) and process for ten minutes. Remove jars carefully and let them sit very still. The lids should POP down within a minute or so (but often this can take longer and you can just let them sit for a few hours undisturbed). Any jars whose lids have not popped down within a few hours should simply be stored in the refrigerator and used soon.

This year, I made a looser version of this sauce, so it was more of a traditional "sauce" with more of a liquid consistency, rather than a jelly consistency. When you're boiling your cranberry mixture, you can make this call. Boil your cranberry mixture for a shorter period of time if you want a more liquidy sauce.

Enjoy! Happy Thanksgiving!