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| Here are two delectable baked goods featuring
cranberries, one of America's three native cultivated fruits (the other
two are the blueberry and the Concord grape). |
| Tart, jewel-like, cranberries, along with oranges, are the fruit-consolation
crop of the otherwise drab (produce-wise) winter season. Prettier than any
holiday decoration, they deserve a life beyond a mere once-a-year Thanksgiving
condiment. |
| • One cranberry use is
as a sweet bread; not the very sweet, high-fat one you probably know, but a
terrific variation of one of the old Dairy Hollow House favorites, the luscious,
low-fat
Cornmeal Oatmeal Blueberry (or Cranberry) Bread. Try it as part of
breakfast, or in a holiday bread basket, accompanying any festive dinner. Or
play up the loaf's mild sweetness by toasting it lightly and serving it with a
scoop of vanilla ice cream or Soy Delicious. (P.S. And is it ever EASY!
Baking just doesn't get simpler.) |
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• The other cranberry idea
presented here, Cranberry & Apricot
Crisp, definitely is dessert, and in it tart cranberries combine
with gorgeous and intensely flavored dried apricots. The two are both assertive
fruits, and in this crisp each keeps their character intact. Yet the two play
off the other synergistically, both visually (golden brown and ruby red) and
flavor-wise. Though you can serve it with yogurt, frozen yogurt, or ice cream or
soy milk frozen dessert (like Soy Delicious) or even real whipped cream --- it
is also quite spectacular unadorned. |
| Getting
bogged down: further cranberry shores |
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Want to cook with these bright,
C-rich winter treasures still more? Click for
cranberry
recipes and still more cranberry recipes at the websites of
Cape Cod Cranberry
Growers Association and
Northland Cranberries, Inc. respectively. Now, it's true that
in Passionate
Vegetarian proper, there are also many more recipes beyond the two above which use
fresh or dried cranberries (ohhh those cranberry poached pears are
delish)... Now come on, you can't honestly expect us to put ALL our recipes
up on the site... you're supposed to run right out and buy yourself a copy:
plus one for your little sister, your mama, you ex-husband's cousin; your
sister's daughter, nem'n'all...But meanwhile... |
| •
Although most of us thinking of Cape Cod as the epicenter of
cranberry-growing, Wisconsin actually raises 52% of the total crop, with
Massachusetts coming in second at 29%. Only five states are suitable for
cranberry culture. Here, a
Wisconsin
cranberry farmer at harvest. |
| ... some quick cranberry notes. Did you know that
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| •
there's an annual
Cranberry Harvest
Festival held each Columbus Day weekend in South Carver, Massachusetts? |
| • the word "cranberry"
has its origins in Pilgrim nomenclature; America's early immigrants called the
fruit "craneberry", because they thought the plant's small, pink spring blossoms
resembled the head and bill of Sandhill cranes? |
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Native Americans had used cranberries for hundreds of years,
not only as a foodstuff (pemmican, an early precursor of the now-ubiquitous
protein bar, was one --- a high protein portable block of of crushed
fruit, dried meat and melted fat) but also as a wound-healer and dye?
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cranberries have been cultivated since 1816, and shipped to
Europe for sale since the 1820s? |
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the Pilgrims began extracted cranberry juice in 1683
(gee, guess they had bladder infections too, though you don't
really think of Pilgrims as engaging in the type of activities which conduce to
such, do you?)? |
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their growing requirements are utterly unique: cranberries
grow and survive only under a rigidly particular set of conditions --- an acid
peat soil, lots of fresh water, sand, in impermeable beds (bogs) which layer
sand, peat, gravel and clay, and an April-to- November growing season? That
natural bogs were created millions of years ago by glacial deposits? That
you can tour a
bog? |
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the afore-mentioned bladder infection-reducing qualities of
cranberry juice is no myth? That cranberries contain bacteria-blocking compounds
which not only are helpful are in preventing UTIs, but may also block those
bacteria responsible for ulcers and gum disease? That you can find out more
about
cranberries and natural health from herbalist Steven Foster (of
Fayetteville, Arkansas) who calls the berry a "quintessential American
folk remedy"? |
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