urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tem2 I Make Stuff Up! tem2 2038-01-19T03:14:07Z urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:tem2:135428 2038-01-19T03:14:07Z 2038-01-19T03:14:07Z <span style="font-weight: bold;">Today's word of the day is: Cranberry Sauce, food of the gods!</span><br /><br />You know that gelatinous red goo that plops into a serving bowl, still retaining the perfect shape of the can it came in? That's not a complement to your Thanksgiving dinner, it's an insult! You can't even call it cranberry sauce, any more than you'd pry meat out of a can and call it turkey.<br /><br />When I was a kid, I taught myself how to make real cranberry sauce--which was not hard at all because the basic recipe is just to combine cranberries with sugar and boiling water, heating for ten minutes and then refrigerating overnight. Cranberry sauce was among the first three recipes I ever mastered, along with the combining of cereal with milk and the toasting of bread.<br /><br />I feel guilty about how easy this stuff is to make, contrasted with how my family raves over it, so I usually punch it up with extra fruits and nuts to increase the level of difficulty and make it my own.<br /><br />Here's what we're having this year:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">THAI CRANBERRY SAUCE</span><br />Add lychee nuts and shredded coconut.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">TROPICAL CRANBERRY SAUCE</span><br />Add pineapple, kiwi, and sliced almonds.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">ORCHARD CRANBERRY SAUCE</span><br />Add peaches, sliced almonds, and mandarin orange.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">DATE NUT CRANBERRY SAUCE</span><br />Add peanuts and dates.<br /><br />Anyone else have a favorite kind of cranberry sauce?<br />