Cranberry Sauce Recipe

Thank goodness for lonely bags of fruit on the shelves. If those last couple of packets of cranberries hadn’t been sitting there all alone, I may never have made the following cranberry sauce recipe…

Is it just me or do you ever feel sorry for food?

Tins, packets and fresh food of all descriptions perch on shelves or lay tumbled in large baskets, waiting for us to choose them. They proudly display their carefully designed labels or shiny buffed skins, hoping that we’ll pop them into our baskets.

Sometimes I wonder whether, in the darkness of night when there’s nobody around, the fruit or tins jostle around, nudging their competitors out-of-the-way enabling the most attractive to take prime place on the display when the lights are switched on in the morning, ensuring that we will clasp our hand around that particular net of oranges or that particular shiny tin of baked beans. Sometimes the bruised veg appear on the top of the pile and we cast them to one side, choosing the best of the bunch for our supper.

After a while and particularly if the shop assistants haven’t had time to restock, all the lovely food is taken, leaving the unloved or forlorn items abandoned and waiting to make their way to the discount counter or even worse, the giant trash bins outside.

Appearances can be deceptive of course. What we see on the outside isn’t always representative of what’s within….

Which is precisely what I discovered this week when I found a bag of cranberries sneaking their way into my basket. And yes, no doubt there are dozens of reasons why I shouldn’t be buying berries in bags but hey, we gotta live a bit too, right…

My bag of slightly overripe and bruised cranberries was the last of three in the display. I checked the label, this particular bag had travelled all the way from the USA before it arrived in my regular little shop in Bagenalstown. All the effort of growing the berries – picking them, packing them, shipping them across high seas then unloading and driving all of those hundreds of miles, before opening the boxes and displaying them … it didn’t seem right that they’d end up in the refuse….

So I bought them. I felt sorry for them – is there any hope 😉 

Farmhouse Cheddar, Rocket, Beetroot & Cranberry Sauce Roll

Cranberry sauce shouldn’t just be for Christmas. It’s delicious served with chicken, roast beef and pork chops, in sandwiches with cheddar cheese or spread thickly onto buttered and freshly sliced bread with blue cheese and turkey. With that in mind, here’s a quick cranberry sauce recipe to which port and clementines have been added.

Do you take the last items of the shelf or would you move onto something more highly stocked?