Thursday, November 14, 2013

It's beginning to smell a lot like cranberry sauce

When the cooler weather comes and we begin spending the majority of our time indoors, I begin to think about cooking some seasonal favorites that we haven't tasted since last year. Our family loves cranberry sauce, I mean they would eat it daily if I made it. Store bought cranberry sauce is like apple sauce, they can take it or leave it, but homemade they love. I prefer homemade anyway, I enjoy the luxury of knowing that I'm feeding them wholesome food without high fructose corn syrup and other junk. My recipe uses apples, it boosts the nutritional value and increases yield too, which is a nice bonus.
To begin wash 3 bags of cranberries (12 ounces each). Place in a large pot and add 6 cups of sugar and 4 1/2 cups water.



Wash and shred 6 apples, I used Winesap because I still have a bushel left after making all the applesauce we wanted. I ended up canning 72 quarts of sauce.




Cook over medium high heat until all berries burst, apples are tender and it passes the sheeting test. OK, truthfully I don't do the sheeting test. I just cook and stir and taste until it seems done enough and then worry constantly that I messed it up. But that's me.



Place in pint jars leaving 1/2 inch headspace and can for 15 minutes. Yield: 7 pints for a cost of less than $2/jar if you buy cranberries for $2/bag like I did. I want to make another 3 batches at least.



In other homey news, Gill and the boys got a patch of ground cleared enough to plant the garlic I've been saving. We put 175 cloves in the ground. I can't wait to harvest ours and quit buying the bleached Chinese garbage that I was using.

1 comment:

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