Cooking With the Beatles

If you listen very carefully to the end of Strawberry Fields, you'll hear John say "cranberry sauce" a couple of times. If you looked in my kitchen today, you'd find the same thing. I made it with local, organic cran's, which are increasingly rare as more and more are grown in Wisconsin. (You can see the bogs from the road if you're on I-90.) I love cranberries, but the question is always how to sweeten them to the degree that the other dinner guests will actually eat them too? Loads of honey? Too expensive. Tons of sugar? Too diabetes inducing. Well, I finally cracked the code. I cooked them in a little cider I had lying around, then pureed them in the blender. The color is unbelievable - the photo does not do it justice - and they're just sweet enough. I thought about adding some ginger, but the little Mark Bittman on my shoulder said no.