Thanksgiving Favorite

Everyone has their favorite dish to eat on Thanksgiving. For lots of people it is the turkey, many others love the stuffing or the green bean casserole or the pumpkin pie. For me, my annual favorite dish is the cranberry sauce. I have, over the years, honed and tweaked my special recipe and volunteered to make the cranberry sauce at every Thanksgiving dinner I have attended for at least 10 years running.

I get so excited when the grocery stores stack up the bags of fresh cranberries. It is the dish that I make well ahead of time so that I can sneak spoonfuls from the fridge in the days leading up to the Big Feast. It is the spot of brilliant color on a plate of beige and white and brown and green. It is the zest and freshness that compliments all other holiday food and lets your mouth know that this really IS a celebration of taste. I have, of course, already made my batch of cranberry sauce this year. And I just had another bite on the sly while rooting through the fridge for something else. I can only hope there will be enough left for everyone else on Thursday!

Holiday Cranberry Sauce

1 bag fresh cranberries
2/3 cup sugar
1 cup fresh squeezed orange or tangerine juice
grated and finely chopped zest from 2 oranges
1/2 cup frozen blueberries
2 or 3 oranges, sectioned

Combine the juice, sugar, cranberries and zest in a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce to a simmer and cook for 5 or 6 minutes, until the cranberries have popped. Remove from the eat an stir in the frozen blueberries. Cool. Fold in the orange sections.

Note: I often double or triple this recipe if I am cooking for a large group.