Easy Cranberry Sauce Recipe

I'm in the midst of advance preparations for Thanksgiving. Part of our meal includes homemade cranberry sauce, which I make a day or two in advance and refrigerate or I make well in advance and freeze. 

The recipe I use is easy and very basic. Some cranberry sauce recipes add items like cinnamon and grated orange rind but we like ours simple because that is the way we have always had it and that is the way it is "supposed" to taste for us. Personally, I like it because it tastes good and because it is so easy to put together.

It is, of course, a perfectly acceptable choice to buy a can of cranberry sauce but making it yourself really is very simple and afterwards you can feel good about having done so rather than having opened a can.


The ingredients are simple. All you need is:

1 cup of sugar
1 cup of water
1.5 cups or 12 ounces of fresh or frozen cranberries

Put these three ingredients in a pot and boil gently for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. If at this point your sauce seems very runny, you can choose to boil it for a couple of minutes longer. Doing so won't hurt the end product and will just make your sauce a bit thicker.

The cranberries release pectin, which helps the sauce to gel so you do not have to add anything else as a thickener.

This morning I used 2 cups of frozen cranberries and boiled them for five minutes longer.

I choose to serve mine in a pretty little glass bowl.  It is nice that the bowl is clear, which allows the beautiful red color of the cranberry sauce to be a decorative element on our table.

If you are feeding only one or two people, it is an easy enough matter to freeze half of the cranberry sauce for next time.

Happy Thanksgiving!
Brenda

 

Easy Mashed Potato Recipe For One

One of the first recipes that my younger son asked about when he moved out was mashed potatoes and, while mashed potatoes are a pretty easy item to make, when you are getting started in the kitchen, you need some sort of guideline so here it is, the simplest mashed potato recipe you will ever find.

If you are worried about the size of the potatoes, don't be.  Mashed potatoes are pretty forgiving so the following amounts do not have to be exact. If your potatoes are a bit bigger, you might need a little bit more milk and conversely, if they are a bit smaller, you might add a little bit less milk.

EASY MASHED POTATO RECIPE

3/4 tsp salt (though in our home we cook them without salt)

3 medium-sized potatoes

1-1/2 tbsp butter

1/3 cup milk

In a small pot, boil 3 cups of water and 1/4 tsp salt.  Add the potatoes, cover them and cook at a gentle boil. Potatoes do not need to be in hard-boiling water.   They'll need to cook for 20 to 30 minutes and you will know they are done by inserting a fork into a potato to see if it is soft.  Drain well and then add the butter, the rest of the salt and the milk, which I like to warm up a little bit in the microwave first.  If you are unsure about the size of your potatoes, add some of the liquid instead of all of it.  Using a potato masher, mash until creamy, adjust the amount of milk as required & ENJOY.

See you
in the kitchen!
Brenda