Growing Cranberries in Cape Cod

November 18, 2016October 23, 2023 ~ Judy's Chickens ~ 27 Comments

What is not to love about the cranberry?

The berry’s gorgeous, soothing, deep red color screams, “Hello, holiday cooking, I’m back!”. The raw fruit is acidic and bitter but is easily tamed by simmering in sugar, water, and a few other goodies to make cranberry sauce,

or by baking them in a delicious nutty pie,

or by sugaring the fruit to make a cheery holiday cake.

Cranberries always add a distinct zing that makes them an excellent addition to sweet and savory culinary dishes and, many, a pretty cocktail.

My fascination with cranberries began as a child growing up in Southeastern Massachusetts, thirty miles from the Ocean Spray Cranberry House restaurant. My mother and stepdad could not pass that restaurant without stopping for the cranberry and cheese Danish pastries. It must have been the sourness of the cranberries that made my mother crave those pastries while pregnant. She would sweetly ask one of us to drive to Wareham to pick up a few. As teens, we were happy to get in her car and go wherever she asked.

Flowers, Berries, and Bogs

Early New England settlers called the cranberry a crane berry because the fruit’s pink blossom resembled the head and bill of a Sandhill Crane. Thanks to Johnston’s Cranberry Marsh for letting me use this striking image:

Cranberry fields look like other farmlands along the roadside

until late summer when, if you look closely, you will see red berries among the green vines that carpet the ground.

In October, the bogs are flooded, the fields are raked to dislodge the fruit, and the berries float to the surface.

If you dissect a cranberry, you will see four interior chambers filled with seeds and air. These air pockets allow berries to float.

The same air pockets cause berries to bounce when dropped and to pop when cooked as the air expands. As a middle-schooler taking Home Ec, we were taught to rinse berries in a bowl of water and to discard those that didn’t float.

Horticulturally, cranberry vines are perennials, some of which have been growing for over a hundred years. Cranberry bogs consist of different layers of soil. The first layer is a naturally occurring clay base. It keeps the ground watertight. Next is a layer of gravel for drainage, followed by a layer of spongy, acidic soil called peat, and topped off with sand.

The Harvest

Originally, cranberries were picked by hand. In the 1890s, wooden scoops with built-in screens were invented and replaced hand-picking. My friend Kendra has a marvelous collection of these harvest implements.

In the 1920s, a “walk behind” mechanical harvester was invented, which is still used today for the ten percent of cranberries that are “dry-harvested.” These carefully handled cranberries are packaged in bags and sold for baking. By the way, if you are making a recipe written before 1980 that calls for “one bag of cranberries,” they mean a 16-ounce bag. In 1980, Ocean Spray switched to 12-ounce bags after a cranberry shortage. Regarding weights and measurements, a 12-ounce bag has 3½ cups of berries.

In 1960, a “wet harvesting” machine was invented. It required a foot of water to be piped into a bog to flood it.

Once flooded, a wet harvesting machine crawls over the field and dislodges berries from their vines, allowing them to float to the surface

where they can be corralled.

Next, they are “vacuumed” by growers.

Ninety percent of cranberries used for juices, dried cranberries, and canned sauces are harvested in this manner.

I am indebted to Minda Bradley for photos of her family harvesting cranberries in Kingston, MA.

Sometimes, water is piped in before a winter freeze to protect vines from the cold. As the warm weather arrives, growers drain the fields to allow vines to come out of dormancy and begin their next growing season.

Cranberry plants were traded by early colonists in exchange for goods from Europe. Sailors ate the high in vitamin C berries while crossing the sea to prevent scurvy. The plants were eventually transplanted to Europe, but soil conditions were not the same, resulting in a different acid level and flavor. Lingonberry or English moss berries are examples of the European version of cranberries.

Ocean Spray Cranberries

Grower-owned Ocean Spray is a cooperative of over 700 farming families across North America who grow over 60% of the world’s cranberries. The cooperative was started in the 1930s in Wareham, MA. It is a treat to stumble on one of these old weathered Ocean Spray signs nestled on the side of the road in Cape Cod.

I tried to root a cranberry vine. but I wasn’t successful. Still, I was able to admire it on my windowsill for a few weeks.

Cranberry Recipes from Judy’s Chickens Blog!

A Cake for All Seasons

Mrs. Walker’s Cranberry Nut Pie

Cranberry Muffins with Orange Zest and Pecans

Brie Bites with Preserves and Toasted Spicy Pecans

Grandma’s Cranberry Sauce

Sorghum Oatmeal Cookies with Ginger and Cranberries

Sorghum, Oats, and Cranberry Granola

Meera’s Arugula, Feta, Dried Cherry (or Cranberry) Salad with Toasted Almonds

Roasted Butternut Squash, Brussels Sprouts, and Cranberries

Special thanks to my New England friends, Donna and Charlie Gibson, and Beth Hayes, for help with this story.

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Roasted Butternut Squash, Brussels Sprouts, and Cranberries

November 5, 2016November 12, 2020 ~ Judy's Chickens ~ 25 Comments

I can not get enough of sweet, roasted chunks of butternut squash in the fall. I like to keep a whole cooked squash in the fridge to use in salads where the bright orange squash chunks take the place of tomatoes, or for use in warm, hearty grain salads made with onions, peppers, kale, and farro. Recently, I picked up a few butternut squashes and Brussels sprouts at a farmstand and roasted them with olive oil, salt, and garlic pepper. When they came out of the oven, I sprinkled them with dried cranberries and a drizzle of sorghum syrup. The result was as colorful as it was yummy.

Prepping butternut squash can be a challenge. The shell is hard to peel, and it feels like you are risking life and limb when you try to cut into one. I make a shudder/squirm movement everytime I make that first cut as I try to shake off the image of me lopping off one of my fingers. Here is a cooking tip, so none of us will ever have to face that scenario, microwave the squash for a few minutes to soften the shell and then peel and slice it. To do this, cut the tips off of each end of the squash, scoop out the seeds with a spoon, pierce the squash up and down its length with a fork, and microwave for three to five minutes depending on whether the squash is cold or at room temperature.

The Recipe
Yield: makes 8-9 cups

Ingredients:

2 pounds Brussels sprouts, stem trimmed and quartered
4 pounds butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cubed
⅓ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon McCormick’s Garlic Pepper
⅔ cup dried cranberries
2 heaping tablespoons sorghum syrup or honey

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 400º

Prep Brussels sprouts: wash, dry, trim the stem, and quarter lengthwise.

Prep butternut squash. Microwave to soften shell and then peel, slice into discs, and dice into bite-sized pieces.

Toss butternut squash, Brussels sprouts, olive oil, salt, and garlic pepper in a bowl. Spread into two parchment-lined, rimmed baking sheets.

Roast for 20 minutes and then rotate pans on oven racks. Cook until done, about 20 minutes more. Remove pans from oven and immediately add about a third of a cup of cranberries and a heaping tablespoon of sorghum (or honey) to each pan. Stir together in a bowl and serve.

Here it is served with Brooks’s recipe for Pork Tenderloin and Perfect Rice Every Time!

Favorite Fall Desserts
Marion’s Crazy Good Pumpkin Bread with Chocolate Chips
Mom’s Pumpkin Pie
Mom’s Apple Pie with a Cheddar Streusel Topping
Mrs. Walker’s Cranberry Nut Pie
Pumpkin Cheesecake Pie
Pumpkin Bread Pudding with Caramel Sauce and Whipped Cream

Always check the website for the most current version of a recipe.

Grandma’s Cranberry Chutney

November 24, 2015November 26, 2020 ~ Judy's Chickens ~ 21 Comments

My mother’s mother, Marion, was one of my heroes. She was beautiful, loving, a fabulous seamstress and knitter, a talented cook, and she called me Darling. When I spent the night at her house, I awoke to her sound in the kitchen fixing breakfast and emptying the dishwasher, sounds that indicated all was well in the world. She would set the breakfast table with pink and white china, and in a matching shallow bowl, there would always be a sectioned grapefruit from my grandparents’ grove. It was one of the many ways she used food to express her love for us.

Holidays were her favorite time of the year to cook. Many of the traditional recipes our family shares come from her recipe stash, especially if cranberries or mangoes are involved. Her recipe for cranberry chutney is my all-time favorite.

It is not Thanksgiving until I have prepared this layered-with-flavor cranberry chutney made with cranberries, apples, pecans, celery, oranges, raisins, and ground ginger.

Back when Grandma made it, a bag of cranberries weighed 16 ounces, not the 12 ounces you get today. A representative at Ocean Spray told me they went to 12 ounces in 1980 when there was a shortage of cranberries. This is good info to know if you are using a pre-1980 recipe that says to “add a bag of cranberries.”

Ingredients:

1 pound fresh cranberries (4½-5 cups), discard any that are shriveled
2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup water
1 cup orange juice
1 cup golden seedless raisins
1 cup chopped celery (4½ ounces or 2 stalks)
1 cup chopped apple, peeled (4 ounces or 1 medium)
1 tablespoon freshly grated orange peel
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 cup chopped pecans

Instructions:
Prep all the ingredients.

Use a box grater or a Microplane to grate the orange. Be sure to wash the orange well first.

Combine cranberries, sugar, water and orange juice. Listen for the sound of cranberries popping as they heat up and expand in the water. Stir occasionally to help dissolve the sugar. Once cranberries come to a boil, set a timer for 15 minutes and simmer over low heat.

Remove the pot from heat. Stir in remaining ingredients and let sit until thickened.

I can’t express how much I love the sweet and tart tastes in this recipe. Instead, I will show you all the tasting spoons I used to try the chutney while it was cooling down!