i have been very neglectful of my commitment to posting some of our holiday foods and the traditions around them....it has been a very busy fall! our holiday meals--Thanksgiving and Christmas are always the same....unless i am just too busy and worn out to try to make them twice...but even then, i usually end up making them...it just wouldn't be those holidays with out that food.....

our menu usually consists of:

• turkey--the recipe for our very, VERY favorite turkey is here
• dressing (of which ALLLLLL the children HATE--but i love)
• cranberry sauce (s)--the reason for this post....
• gravy--find this with the turkey recipe ^^
• biscuits--buttermilk, not sweet biscuits
• yeast rolls--the recipe for those is here
• mashed potatoes
• sweet potato casserole
• waldorf salad
• green beans
• III forks corn
• pumpkin pie--this has become a crustless pumpkin pie that everyone LOVES
• pecan pie--last year we made pecan bars that were SCRUMPTIOUS!
• blackberry cobbler
• and anything anyone else wants to bring, fix or add to this :)

i grew up eating cranberry sauce out of a can--whenever we had it...which wasn't often.  i hated it.  it was nasty stuff to me.  anything that comes plopping out of a can with that sound....yikes!  and then you had to cut it like cold butter....YUK!  NO offense if you LIKE that kind of cranberry sauce, but I DID NOT.

the first time i had cranberry cause that i like, was one year at my dad's home.  my step-mom had me make it.  honestly.  i didn't even know such a thing existed.  so, she taught me how to make it, which was rather easy....

• a bag of cranberries
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• the rind of one orange

put all that in a pot on the stove, boil til they start 'popping' and take it off the stove...that easy....i was a little hesitant.  it didn't look like the stuff in the can...but then i tasted it.....sooooo yummy!  i could have eaten the whole pan of it ;) with my turkey, with my biscuits, with my dressing...with everything and by itself.  i LOVED it.

i began making it for my family--they didn't have my same opinion of it ;)  so...to not lose the ability to still have it and be able to enjoy it...and the {sometimes} adventurous cook that i can be.....i decided to experiment.  I changed the water to orange juice....that helped.

one day, i was perusing....not sure what now...the internet, a magazine or the tv, but i heard or saw a recipe using fresh ginger.  we love ginger, so i decided to try it.  i went to make it and realized that the only juice i had was orange mango.  i used it.  we LOVED it.

so, another time, i didn't have white sugar....i know.....how can that happen at thanksgiving.....and this was before the time when the stores remained open.  i am sure i had used it all on the pies made the days before.  so....i used brown sugar.  it was AWESOME.

then.  last year, we added a bit of finely chopped jalepeno to it....not my favorite, but some of the guys loved it, too.

SO...NOW...here we are with several people liking their cranberry sauce different ways....so we make them all ;)

if this is confusing....comment and i will clarify...but basically its the same recipe on the bag of cranberries with our own adaptations and experimentations.....and let this be an encouragement...you can probably add many more different things and make it your own, too.