Traditional, Homemade Thanksgiving Dinner - Installment #2 - Cranberry Sauce

One of the nice things about making cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving dinner is that you can make it way ahead of time.  Like tomorrow on Veteran's Day.

My cranberry sauce is the kind that you pour into a mold.  If you spray the mold with olive oil before pouring in the sauce, when it's cooled you can easily remove the cranberry sauce for display on dinner table.  I however, do not use a mold.  I pour my cranberry sauce right into prepared mason jars.

I've posted the cranberry sauce recipe before.  It's here.  So, instead of repeating the recipe, I'm going to share some cranberry facts with you:

• Cranberries are grown here in the U.S. in Washington (my home state), Oregon (where I'm employed), Massachusetts, Wisconsin and New Jersey.  BC and Quebec also produce cranberries.
• Cranberries don't grown in water.  They grow on vines in marshes and bogs.  When the fruit is ripe, the marshes are flooded and the berries float making them easier to harvest.
• Americans will consume about 80 millions pounds of cranberries this Thanksgiving.  That's a lot of cranberries!
• Only blueberries top cranberries in the amount of antioxidants per cup.  Cranberries are also a good source of vitamin C, vitamin A, beta carotene, lutein, zea-xanthin, folate, potassium and manganese.