Dirty Sugar Cookies: Liberal Heathen Cranberry Sauce

Milo’s class had a harvest celebration yesterday. The kids contributed cylindrical construction paper turkey hats, leaving the culinary hoop jumping to the big monkeys, many of whom were already stressed to the max with impending guests. One woman got roped into cooking a 9-pound turkey!

Not me. I’m too wily and semi-vegetarian for that. I signed up for cranberry sauce– it’s fast, easy, cheap, and repulsive to the juvenile palate, which meant that I didn’t have to take it personally if the kids turned their noses up at it. Not having a recipe, I sought the advice of my friend, Mrs. X, who allowed as how she usually just throww cranberries in the blender with orange juice and honey. I dunno, that sounds kind of nasty (unless that’s what she’s planning to serve tomorrow, in which case it sounds grrrrrrrrrrrrreat!)

Having grown up with canned cranberry sauce, I'm no expert, but it did seem to me that the homemade variety would require some time atop on the stove before it could be considered edible, a theory my internet research supports.

I also learned that cranberry sauce is a great favorite of fundamentalist Christian homemakers. Good thing it’s so goddamn easy to make because I got totally sucked in by the blog of this one woman,a mother of 12 who regrets the way the recent elections went and strongly suggests involving the kids in the cranberry-sauce making process. I must've spent more than an hour poking around in that alien land! I was like, “Oh my god, I bet this is where Todd Solondz got the idea for Mama Sunshine in Palindromes, a movie I loved even more than I love cranberry sauce. None of the first grade parents I (selectively) polled had seen it. Have you?

Liberal Heathen Cranberry Sauce

Rinse two bags of cranberries, which, if you’re working with loose models picked from your backyard bog, is about six cups' worth. Empty them into your wok. This alone will reassure the cranberries that they’re not in the hands of a red state evangelical. Freakallujah!

Add:
1 & 1/2 cups of apple cider
1 cup of sugar
2 tablespoons of fresh squeezed lemon juice
and a teaspoon or two of zest from one of the seemingly innumerable Clementines colonizing the apartment. The kiddies won't eat it no matter what you do, but just in case, mince that zest up fine so the finicky young can’t detect it visually.

Bring it to a low boil over medium heat. Let it pop and fart for twenty minutes or so, then eat some, and put the rest in the fridge for later. Screw holiday tradition! This one begs year-round eatin'!

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