Easy Peasy Cranberry Sauce Recipes.

As a favor to my dear relatives who were effusive in their praise for my cranberry sauces and asked for the recipes ... Here they are.

Simple Cranberry Sauce. (Everybody likes this and the recipe is on the Ocean Spray Whole Cranberry packet. Look on the back. Take note! I've changed one bit of the instruction, so pay attention.)

First: Use the fresh cranberries, y'all, NOT the canned. Read the entire recipe before you start cooking.

1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar. Put them in a saucepan and heat and stir to just boiling. Add the rinsed cranberries. Bring it all back to a boil. Reduce the heat and boil gently for 10 FULL minutes. Put a spoon in the serving bowl (so it won't break) and pour in the cranberry sauce. Contrary to the Ocean Spray instruction, DON'T COVER (too much moisture forms inside). Let it get to room temperature. REALLY, don't rush this. Then cover and refrigerate for at least 24 hours.  Follow these directions to the letter and you will get perfect cranberry sauce every time! (I promise.)

The cranberry sauce that was the hit yesterday: (I kinda stole this from Food Network, though the amounts are mine.)

Rinse one package of fresh cranberries in a colander. Take one navel orange and grate all the zest on top of the cranberries still in the colander. Set aside and allow them to drain. Meanwhile, cut the now naked navel orange into quarters. Squeeze the juice into a 1 cup container. You should end up with about half a cup of fresh orange juice. Add enough water to the container to equal a cup. Put 1/2 cup of sugar in a small saucepan and add the orange juice and water mixture. (There is a lot of sugar in the orange.) Bring to a boil. Add the cranberries. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and boil gently for 10 minutes. Be Patient! Boil for 10 minutes! It will reduce beautifully! Add a handful and a half of dried cranberries. (I use Crasains, but I don't think it matters.) Blend gently. Put a metal spoon into your serving bowl to collect the heat. Pour into that serving bowl. Please, allow the mixture to cool to room temperature. THEN cover and refrigerate for 24 hours. Serve.

This recipe is an incredible crowd pleaser! Try it! Even my 18 year old niece loved it. (She is very picky!) My husband eats it like Jello.

I've played with cranberry recipes for a long time. I've tried cinnamon, allspice, ginger and pumpkin pie spice. I've added different fruits, including oranges. I've never had a response like I did this year. I brought 2 kinds of cranberry sauce to Thanksgiving Dinner, the plain and the one I adapted and adopted from "The Best Thing I Ever Ate" on the Food Network.  I'm usually taking an entire bowl full of cranberry sauce home. Yesterday, we had a couple of teaspoons left at the end of the meal and our guests were all fighting for the leftovers. (I gave it away, came home and made another entire bowl from scratch for my husband and me. Easy-peasy. Took at total of 15 minutes to create, the rest of the day to get to room temp. and some hours in the fridge.)

To my dear friends and family... Here it is! So easy! You never have to be afraid of Cranberry Sauce again... And you don't have to buy that weird can of ribbed cranberry jelly!

xo.

(By the way... if you really want cranberry jelly and can't abide the whole cranberries, let it cool a bit and put it all in a blender before you put it in the fridge. You will have JELLY.)