I was extra excited when I saw the post on Seasonal Ontario Food about visiting a cranberry farm—it’s almost cranberry time again! As I discovered when I tried to buy cranberries mere days after Christmas last year, these garnet-red berries are mighty hard to come by once the holidays are over. They may well be our last truly seasonal food product, available for only a short and specific time period. Once the roasting pan is put away and the holiday decorations are taken down, you’re not likely to see another fresh cranberry until next Thanksgiving (and darn if I hadn’t just gotten hooked on Orangette’s cranberry chutney).
As the post illustrates, most cranberries are grown in a bog that is flooded at the end of the season. The berries are then knocked off the bushes and float to the top of the water. From there they are harvested, packed, and shipped off to people’s holiday dinner tables. With Canadian Thanksgiving coming up next week, and American Thanksgiving in late November, the cranberry growers are ramping up.
And I am waiting in eager anticipation. This year I plan to stock up.
Don’t forget that cranberries freeze exceptionally well. I am a cranberry fanatic and buy a dozen or so extra bags at the holidays to freeze and use throughout the year.
Nothing special to do with them other than put the bags in the freezer.
We get them again at Easter, since a fair number of Canadians eat Turkey at Easter, too. Of course, now I wonder where the Easter ones come from if they flood the fields out in the fall.
I am a cranberry fanatic too. I stock my freezer with about fifty bags and we eat them all year round. I probably use three dozen additional bags of fresh berries during the season.
I watch carefully for them to appear on the grocery shelves as the first picking seems to have the better quality by quite a bit. Also larger berries.
My father is a diabetic. He loves to have cranberry sauce made with Splenda to use as jam on his morning toast.
I like to make traditional sauce; relish (ground with oranges and usually lots of pecans); apricot chutney. I love to experiment with other recipes.
I usually have three different kinds of cranberries for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
According to what I read, cranberries are very healthful. When making sauce for my family, I often use part Spenda, part sugar.