Getting Ready for Thanksgiving Part 1: Homemade Cranberry Sauce

I grew up eating cranberry sauce out of a can most of the time, and I enjoyed it well enough. Then, one year, I decided to try making it from scratch, and a whole new world opened up! Not only was it incredibly delicious, but it was very quick and easy to make! Now, I still eat the canned stuff, but only in the "lean times" (aka, not the holidays) when I can't get fresh cranberries.

I realize that making a blog post devoted to this recipe may be a bit extraneous, but I'm going ahead anyway because:
1. I need a blog for today! :)
2. I have nothing else to blog about that can't be summed up in the sentence, "The kids have the week off from school so we sat around the house all day."
3. If you are like me (and I know I am!) and you like cranberry sauce but have never tried to make it fresh, this post is for you!!

First of all you've got to buy your bag of fresh cranberries. These will be available in the majority of grocery stores around this time of year. One bag is sufficient to make one "batch" of cranberry sauce (in other words, it should feed 6 people or so for your Thanksgiving dinner). I like to buy multiple bags of cranberries, using one for Thanksgiving, one for Christmas, and maybe even one for some other future special occasion. How do I keep them around for so long without them rotting??

I just stick them in the freezer! Cranberries are a pretty tough little berry, and they will actually keep very well in your freezer for months. For this particular recipe, I used a bag pulled straight out of the freezer...

...which I then opened, rinsing and draining the cranberries.

In the meantime, I literally follow the directions on the back of the bag...it's that easy. I mix one cup of water and one cup of sugar, and bring that mixture to a boil...

...and after the sugar is completely dissolved, I throw in the rinsed cranberries! The berries will hold their shape at first, but after a while, you can see their skins start to split and they gradually dissolve into a bright red, boiling mass that smells very tart & yummy:

Notice that it's starting to look like "sauce" and less like "a bag of berries!"

Here's one thing I do that isn't explicity listed in the recipe: I grate a little orange peel off and toss that in the sauce during the last 2 - 3 minutes of cooking time. It adds a nice tart layer to the taste, and keeps the cranberry flavor "awake" and more "lively" than it might otherwise be. It doesn't affect the color or texture in any way.

So, after it's all boiled down into a thick mass (this takes maybe 10 - 15 minutes), I turn off the heat and let it cool off most of the way...

...then I spoon the sauce into an airtight container...

...and stick it in the fridge--or, in this case, freezer! Turns out, cranberry sauce freezes well, too. This is an extra bonus when you have a lot of food already in your fridge waiting to be cooked for Thanksgiving dinner. On the day of the meal, just take the sauce out of the freezer a few hours in advance, then keep it chilled once it's thawed until it's ready to serve.

Yum! I'll be honest, I make this more for myself than anybody else--Nathan doesn't really like cranberry sauce, and my girls aren't terribly interested in it, either. However, it gives me several days of good eating, so I'm not complaining! It may be my favorite "Thanksgiving" dish; what's yours?