The harsh beauty of Cape Cod brings forth many thoughts and inspirations, but dreaming about cranberries, and all things cranberry was a surprise to even me.  Had I subliminally noticed the cranberry bogs just inland from the desperately sandy coast? I was vacationing on Cape Cod after all.  Whatever the source of my dream, I awakened that first morning of a much-needed vacation with cranberries dancing in my head.

The ability to envision food with absolute clarity has long been a gift my friends say I possess.  Describing textures, aromas, colors, and tastes of various culinary delights come naturally to me.  My dream was rich with every detail of the cranberry.

The dusky red spheres, cranberries.  Oh brother, it’s just a berry! Nonetheless, all of this talk leads me to the delicate subject of Cranberry Sauce.  Delicate I say, because cranberry sauce elicits an array of responses from both fan and foe.  The generic jellied variety versus the more “upscale” whole berry cranberry sauce.  The cranberry sauce of my youth made its annual appearance in the jellied form every November, other than that we never saw the stuff. On Thanksgiving it seems, I was responsible for opening the can from which this jellied mass would slither, albeit with a good bit of coaxing. Unable to extrude the burgundy gelatin, Mom would call out, “run a knife around the rim, and poke the bottom of the can, it releases the suction.”  One can only imagine the food process by which the jellied cranberry makes its way into the appropriate receptacle.  Actually, people refer to this as “canned cranberry sauce” as opposed to fresh I guess, but we’ll get to that later.

Have you ever noticed the symmetrical rings that form on the jellied cranberry once you do get it out of the can?  They’re quite decorative actually.  The compressed mass assumes the shape of the can with its ribs and all.  I have always enjoyed slicing the jellied cranberry into slabs that resemble hockey pucks, a little thinner perhaps, and texturally worlds apart.  I arrange the slices on a plate in a circular pattern, that when complete remind me of the petals on a flower. There is no need to slice the whole berry cranberry sauce, rather I spoon it into a pretty cut crystal bowl and garnish it with refreshingly bright, green sprigs of parsley.  Why do I feel the need to garnish a bowl of whole berry cranberry sauce, but not my jellied slices?  What a snob.  Are people who consume whole berry cranberry sauce, converts from a jellied childhood?  Are they trying to rise above their middle class roots to a better life, a life expressed in the foods they consume?  You do know that the type of cranberry sauce you prefer speaks volumes about you as a person.  It’s like all of the people who live Good Housekeeping lives but aspire to Martha Stewart Living.  Would any self respecting Martha “wannabe” eat canned cranberry sauce? Which leads me to the topic of fresh cranberry relish.  There you have it, the epitome of the good life.  Homemade goodness served fresh on your, or should I say, my table.  Okay, I admit it.  I’m a cranberry convert.  Jellied childhood, fresh cranberry relish adulthood.

I’ll never forget the first time I made and tasted homemade cranberry orange relish.  It was as if I was meeting a stranger for the first time, yet knowing we would be fast and lifelong friends.  So began my relationship with fresh cranberries.  I decided to make the relish after seeing the recipe on the back of a bag of those luscious berries.  The berries began to appear in the grocery store at the beginning of November, plenty of time to make my holiday preparations, or so I thought.  But as Thanksgiving made its approach, there wasn’t a bag of those buggers anywhere in town!  Not to be denied, I made my way to one of those foofy food markets, swarming with mega moms, that not only make their own fresh cranberry relish, but probably pluck the feathers out of their own farm raised, free range, hormone free turkeys!  I grabbed a bag of those precious berries with the ferocity of a she cat at a Filene’s sale.

Once home, I put the berries in my food processor and gave them a whirl.  Much to my surprise, the mix became a beautiful burgundy and white speckled concoction.  Did you know that beneath that gorgeous exterior, cranberries are white?  This mixture pulsing away in my processor, changed hues to a rich, reddish pink.  I’ve come to the realization that I’m what I call a “Martha wanna be”, for not only am I making homemade relish, but homemade cranberry orange relish to boot.  The recipe called for one whole orange ground up, peel and all, minus the seeds.  Have you ever cut up an orange and gotten the oil from the rind on your fingers?  The effervescent fragrance can clear even the stuffiest of sinuses.  Potent, fresh, ripe, vivid.  My ingredients ground, I combined the now pinkish, macerated cranberries with that plump orange, rind, pith, juice and all.  A gentle folding stir, and now it was ready to taste.  Oh bliss!  Homemade cranberry orange relish on this most American of holidays.  Ah – here it is, a small spoon lifted to eager lips awaiting a culinary triumph! Aggghhhhhh, bleckkk, yuch, ooooo, tarte!!!!! What had happened? So lovingly prepared, what a disappointment.  I rooted feverishly through the kitchen trash trying to find the plastic bag that once contained the cranberries. In my haste to get the finished product, I overlooked a very important ingredient…sugar.  Ah yes, those granules of sweetness that make everything taste better than it has a right to.  Sugary tablespoons cascaded onto the cranberry orange mixture.  As I was sprinkling the sugar it blanketed the relish like a dusting of snow.  Unlike the misery of melting snow with its attendant brown slush, the sugar began to melt into the berries and the result would be an unseen transformation from tarte to sublime.

As we gathered around the table on Thanksgiving day, I placed a spoon of the upscale, homemade cranberry orange relish on my plate right next to several slices of succulent white turkey meat bathed in a rich pan roasted gravy.  Delightful.  Thanksgiving dinner, with all the trimmings, but that’s another dream, and another story….