Easy Thanksgiving Recipe: Cranberry Sauce

[I know this is last-minute, but I was cooking up some of this stuff just now and I thought...I really should share this recipe.]

 

 Is that what your family's cranberry sauce is going to look like tomorrow? Really?

I have to admit, I kinda like the canned stuff. But did you know that making cranberry sauce [y'know, with real cranberries] is simple? In fact, I first found this recipe in Real Simple magazine. See what I did there? Haha.

Anyway, I made this cranberry sauce last year for Thanksgiving, and I'm probably going to make it every Thanksgiving for the rest of my life. It tastes that much better. (Unless you really don't like cranberries at all. In that case, I can't help ya.) You can check out the original cranberry sauce recipe if you want. I've changed it just a little bit, so here's the really simple cranberry sauce I'm making this year:

Homemade Cranberry Sauce
(heavily based on a recipe from Real Simple) 
1 package cranberries (I think the standard-size package is 12 oz or so.) 
1 cup apple juice 
1/3 cup sugar 
1/4 cup (heaping) brown sugar 


Combine all ingredients in a medium saucepan. Simmer, stirring frequently, until almost all of the cranberries have burst, and the sauce has thickened. (I usually make the sauce quite a bit thicker than what's pictured with the original recipe.) 


Taste and add more sugar if needed--some cranberries are kickier than others. Also, keep an eye on how vigorously those berries are simmering--if it gets to a full-out boil, you'll be wiping up cranberry splatters.

 Really and truly--all you have to do is measure, dump, and stir. That's it. Oh, and eat. And then do a little happy dance because you've freed your family from canned cranberry sauce forever. {sauce photo credit}

Daddy Time

There are some things that Isaac teaches Little Boy to do, because I either don't know how or can't do them very well. Things like playing with Lincoln Logs and Legos.

 And now these:

 
Checkers.

 
And chess.

 Little Boy's having a hard time grasping chess and checkers. He isn't competitive at all, and he doesn't really "get" that he should try to win the game. I expect that to last, oh...maybe until he has a sibling--then he'll have someone to compete with.

Pretending It's Sunny Outside...

It's been really, reeeeeally cold here lately. Really. No, really. Temps are in the single digits, and wind is gusting up to--well, you don't want to know.

So here are some pictures from a few weeks ago. It was sunny, we were at the beach...it was cool enough to wear jackets, but there was no ice anywhere. And that's good enough for me.

 
Somehow, this hat drifted further and further down toward his eyes as the day went on...and it didn't occur to him to fix it.


Beach. Sun. Yes.


*Sigh*....

Not Ashamed

{image source}

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth."

-Romans 1:16

Well....

So it's been a couple weeks, huh? Well...I've been busy with school, which, even though it's Independent Study, really does eat up my blogging time. (And my blog-reading time. My Google Reader has a bajillion unread posts in it.) And then Little Boy and I had colds, and our computer broke... What I'm really trying to say is, blogging will still be spotty for awhile. But here's a little update. I chopped off my hair. (Not really EARTH! SHATTERING!, but how much blogging really is? Haha.)