Cranberry Sauce (aka I Buried Paul)

Happy Thanksgiving! I don't really do anything special for Thanksgiving dinner except make my own cranberry sauce. Numerous people have expressed amazement at this proof of my culinary prowess and have requested the recipe.

I'm not sure why everyone is so impressed . Cranberry sauce is hardly the most labor-intensive or complicated recipe in my repertoire. Nor is it the most expensive. It's actually pretty cheap and easy. It can be made ahead of time, and it tastes so much better than the canned versions And there's no weird can markings. Besides the cats like chasing the cranberries I drop on the floor. Way cheaper than cat toys.

Homemade cranberry sauce is also a dish of jewel-like beauty, especially when served in an heirloom cut glass compote. That's assuming you did not step on the antique compote handed down by your great-grandmother and break it when it was buried in the Katrina sludge on your kitchen floor. Not that I know anybody who did that.

As a Thanksgiving bonus, here's a bit of "cranberry sauce trivia" sure to ignite a post-prandial debate at the dinner table.

In the 1960s, Beatle fans became convinced that Paul McCartney had been killed in a car crash and been replaced by an imposter. The other Beatles, allegedly, were part of this elaborate hoax and buried clues about Paul's demise in their song lyrics and album cover art .

For example at the end of the song "Strawberry Fields Forever" John Lennon supposedly said "I buried Paul" in deep, sepulchral tones. John, however, asserted that he actually said "cranberry sauce."

Now I have no idea why John felt the need to drop a random reference to an American holiday condiment into a song about a former orphanage in Liverpool, England. But I believe him. This was at the height of his acid-dropping years. He said and did a lot of strange things then.

The "Paul Is Dead" phenomenon reached the level of mass hysteria and persists today. It has been the subject of numerous articles, books, web sites and doctoral dissertations. My sister wrote her senior English term paper about it. It is all fascinating -- and believable -- especially if you're under the influence and/or into trippy coincidences.

Oh, and speaking of trippy coincidences, Paul McCartney will be in concert tonight on ABC.

If that really is Paul.


Cranberry Sauce


1 1-lb bag of cranberries, rinsed and picked through

3/4 cup-1 cup of water

cup sugar

zest of 2 oranges

flesh of 2 oranges, cut up

4 whole cloves

3 cinnamon sticks


Mix sugar with water in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil. Zest oranges, peel away the skin and pith and cut the flesh into chunks. Discard pith and skin. Add the cranberries, zest, orange flesh, cloves and cinnamon sticks to the sugar. Bring to a boil. Cook 10 minutes at medium heat, stirring occasionally. Let cool and refrigerate overnight.


What could be easier? Now if you want to be hard on yourself, you can reduce the heat to a simmer and cook this for 2 hours or so until it's a little mushier but it's really not necessary. I actually prefer the quick cook method with keeps the cranberries whole and makes it more like a cross between a sauce and a relish.