a simple real food recipe :: cranberry sauce

Over the last couple years I have tried taking Thanksgiving staples that I love, and making them more “real food friendly” so that I can feel good about serving it to my kids.

Here’s the thing. I WANT my kids to crave all the flavors of Thanksgiving! I WANT them to enjoy food, and look forward to Thanksgiving dinner as much as I do! Like I said in THIS post about Thanksgiving stuffing, the FOOD is not the enemy, PROCESSED food is.

This year I finally figured out cranberry sauce. I have tried different recipes over the last couple years – sometimes more than one recipe in one Thanksgiving season! The problem was, that I grew up on cranberry sauce in the can 😉 I was trying all these fancy recipes with other added spices, fruit, and textures, and it just wasn’t the same to me! They tasted fine, but I had to be honest with myself! I loved that tart and sweet simple cranberry flavor with my turkey!

So this year I decided to keep it just that simple. Cranberries and natural sweetener. Why not just get the stuff in the can? The more popular brands are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. I know it’s only one meal a year, but I don’t care to support the GMO laden corn syrup industry, and I just plain don’t want it in my kids. Health food stores carry organic cranberry sauce without the HFCS, and in a pinch that is fine. But for me, part of the fun of Thanksgiving is making things from scratch. Teaching my girls how to cook. Letting them see what a real cranberry looks like, and feel proud of themselves for making the finished product.

This literally takes about 10 minutes to get into your jello mold and can be done days in advance. And the flavor was exactly what I wanted to go with my turkey 😉 Perfectly sweet and tart cranberry.

Kitchen Tips:

• This recipe made enough to fill  my 2 muffin tins about 1/4 of the way to make little circles – 24 all together. This was enough for our 2 Thanksgiving dinners we attended! If you feed more just double the recipe! Half it if you have a smaller gathering.
• HERE is the Great Lakes Gelatin.
• I just used the bottoms of muffin tins to make mine circles! You can find more individual mold shapes HERE, or large jello molds HERE.
• Make this up days ahead of time – even the weekend before Thanksgiving. Keeps just fine in the fridge.
• If you want a “saucier” cranberry sauce, use less gelatin.
• From what I have researched and read, cranberry crops are pretty heavily pesticided. If you can find organic cranberries, that is what I would go for. They were only pennies more than conventional where I live.

YOUR TURN!
Did you grow up on cranberry sauce from a can? Let me know how this tastes compared to what you are used to!