[Upbeat jazz music]
Cranberries! They are a sign of Fall. They're the brightest part of Fall for sure.
You buy them in bags, fresh at the grocery store,
and if people celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas usually have
some cranberry sauce on the table.
The cranberries were introduced as food by the North American Native Indians,
and they were the first ones to make it food.
They also used it for lots of other things, like herb medications
and for dyes for the fabrics.
So, I want to show you the other ways you can buy them,
and then we'll talk more about the fresh ones.
[Rustling bag]
You can buy them dry.
I want to pour these out for you because they are delicious.
They do have to add a sugar to them because the one thing about cranberries
is that they are tart, and you'll see they look like big raisons.
They are soft. They're usually about softer than raisons.
They're very good for you. They're very high in fiber.
You can sprinkle these on anything whether you're cooking it, or if it's raw,
you can just add it to salads, you can add it to your baked goods,
like if you're making cranberry bread or something.
Um, It's also a great snack for kids in the lunches,
and when they get home from school.
Cranberries haven't been dried for that long
for us, that are so easy for us to use, and you know they're kind of expensive.
Somebody told me, "I thought they were kind of expensive,"
but I think for the amount of fiber that you get,
and the more vitamin C that you get it, and the manganese that you get,
it's one of the highest ones in manganese of all the fruits,
it's really worth every penny and you don't have to waste them.
And the other way that most people think of it is in the can,
and we come in cans and we have two different kinds.
The can.. this is the can that has the whole berries.
And that is really high in fiber, and as you can see,
when you push it down, you can see the pieces of berry in there.
You can see some of the pieces.
It's just berries cooked in sugar and water,
and then they are made into canned goods.
You can do the same thing at home,
and I'm going to show you how to do that.
Then the other way is just jellied, and it doesn't have any of the pieces in it.
It's just plain, and as you can see there's no pieces in here.
Now, one of the things to use this for is like jelly, both of these.
You can use these as jelly on your bread,
so that way you add that tart flavor in the morning for breakfast.
This is great on pancakes, anything that's like that.
You know waffles, I love cranberry sauce on waffles,
um, and that way you end up having a very healthy breakfast,
or even a snack, or my dinner.
One of the favorite dinners for me is breakfast,
having eggs and waffles with cranberry sauce on them.
So, this is the two ways you can buy that.
Now, if you like, as you notice it's upside down,
you have to open the bottom, but if you buy these in the store
in the cans, stock up on them around Thanksgiving
because they have them on sale for the holidays,
and they start putting them on sale right after Halloween
because that is the best time of year to buy it.
Although, they're available all year in the store in the cans
and in the dried form also, they are available year-round.
Now, finding the fresh year-round is a little more difficult,
and I think part of it is is that the consumers don't demand it
all year round.
It's not that we couldn't have it all year round,
but there's only about 10 percent of the crops that become fresh
to the stores for us to purchase.
Most of it's dried and canned.
And you can also get it in juices, but when I was reading
the juice labels for cranberries.. juice most of them are mixed,
most of the time it's mixed with another juice because it's so tart.
And I found that they added quite a bit of sugar to it,
so you can buy the juice,
I don't think it's quite as healthy for you as the fresh, or the dried, or the canned,
but, um, it is something consider, makes gorgeous fruit punch of course
because it has this gorgeous cranberry color
which is just great with all kinds of foods.
So, now let's talk about the fresh.
Now, when you get a bag, it's usually about a pound worth,
and there's a great recipe on the back for the Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce,
and it is so easy to make.
And what's really nice about that is that you can control
the kind of sweetener that you use, and you can control
how much you use.
The recipe calls for one cup of water with one cup of sugar,
and I have reduced the sugar down to a half a cup and it's worked very well.
And when you do it, what you put into the pot
is you put in a cup of water...
you put in a cup of sugar or less...
and then you stir that up bring that to a boil...
and then you add one whole package of fresh cranberries.
You just dump those in.
And at first you think, "Wow, that's really nice,"
and then all of a sudden they start popping open.
And I have a pot here, right next to me,
that I've been doing for you to show you today,
and what's happened is they've been cooking and they're just about done.
And if you'll notice it's got now, the water is now the color of cranberries,
most of the cranberries are now popped open.
You can see most of them aren't round, they're kind of flat,
and the juice is just beautiful.
See that?
Oh, it makes me hungry right here just watching this.
And so what you do, and it looks like I've got a few more minutes
cause I've got a quite a few that are still round,
and then what I do near the end is I push them up against the side of the pan
to be sure they're all popped.
And then I want to show you what it looks like
when we put it into a container.
So, I've got that all stirred, and now I'm going to..
use this spoon and I'm going.. oops!
I'll move that out of the way.
I'm going to show you it is so beautiful.
And if you let this sit at room temperature till it gets really cool,
and I want to show you the difference between what you can make at home,
and then what you can buy at the grocery store in the can.
You'll notice the one that I have, you can actually see
the more round pieces of the, of the berries in there.
You can see more juice so separated between the berries..
and this is actually, this one just has white sugar,
and I use the whole cup.
I, you know when I first get a recipe I use the whole,
I do exactly what the recipe says, and then after that I make adjustments.
So, this one is one cup of water with one cup of sugar
and my whole bag of berries.
But if you'll notice, doesn't that look homemade?
This is so good!
I hope you take, buy a bag and try it.
I want to show you how gorgeous the cranberries are.
If you only use this as a table setting for your holiday,
you can stick a candle in the middle. It is beautiful!
This is the most gorgeous color.
So, go to my website!
I have some other ideas for entertaining with cranberries
and for making it so you can eat it every day.
[Upbeat jazz music...]