Cranberry Sauce

In today's story, Cranberry Sauce, Jason learns to make his mom's spicy orange cognac cranberry sauce

Today's prompt was inspired by my favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner: cranberry sauce! For those who celebrate, Happy Thanksgiving! 

More about Susan Quilty

Susan Quilty mainly writes novels, including two standalone novels and her YA series: The Psychic Traveler Society.  Susan's short stories for Freely Written are created during quick writing breaks and shared as a way to let go of perfection and encourage writing for fun.

Website:  SusanQuilty.com
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Transcript

Below is the transcript for Season 1, Episode 153 of Freely Written, a podcast by author Susan Quilty:

Welcome to Freely Written, where a simple prompt leads to a little unplanned fiction. 

[Light piano music]

Hi, friends! I’m Susan Quilty, and today’s prompt is Cranberry Sauce

Today’s story will be available the day before Thanksgiving. In the United States, at least. For those who will celebrate tomorrow, Happy Thanksgiving! For those in countries who already celebrated, Happy Belated Thanksgiving! And, for those who don’t celebrate Thanksgiving at all, have a… happy day!

For me, Thanksgiving is simply a day to feel grateful with family and friends. While some people focus on the turkey—which I don’t eat—my favorite part of the feast is the cranberry sauce. Thanksgiving is usually the first time of the year that I make cranberry sauce. Then I swoon over its deliciousness, make a lot more all through December, until I get bored with it and don’t make it again until the next Thanksgiving. Ah, traditions.

Anticipating the cranberry sauce that I will be making the day before Thanksgiving, I’ve decided to use it for today’s story. As always, that means following my usual Freely Written process, where I sit down with the prompt and write whatever comes to mind, with no planning and very little editing. 

Let’s see where that went today:

Cranberry Sauce

This was the year. Today was the day. Jason was going to learn how to make his mom’s special spicy orange cognac cranberry sauce. 

When he was younger, he’d turned up his nose at the cold, lumpy concoction. It did not look like something he would want to eat. When he was a little older, and his tastes had expanded, he’d tried the tiniest of bites, then gagged dramatically, coughing over its spicy kick while the grown-ups laughed.

Two years ago, at fourteen, he’d eyed its glossy, deep red sheen, smelled its scent of heated spice, and sampled another bite. This time, he was in heaven! The cranberry sauce was chilled, but brought its own heat. It was tart and sweet, with a hint of oranges and a taste he couldn’t place. 

“Should he be eating that?” Jason’s uncle had asked. “Doesn’t it have cognac in it?”

“Oh, the alcohol cooks off,” his mom had answered, pleased that Jason was finally enjoying her favorite holiday side dish. 

He’d eaten it again last year. So much of it that his mom eventually cut him off, telling him to leave enough for others. By leaving enough for others, he knew she meant leaving enough for their leftovers so she wouldn’t have to make another batch the next day. 

In the lead-up to Thanksgiving this year, Jason had casually asked if she was making her cranberry sauce again.

“Of course,” his mom said with a laugh. “Should I make an extra batch?”

Jason tried to downplay his request, then switched gears, suggesting she make three or four batches. “We need to leave enough for everyone.”

“I’ll tell you what,” his mom had countered. “We can make more if you give me a hand. Deal?”

“What? You’re going to make me cook?” Jason groaned dramatically, slumping his shoulders as if he’d been hit in the gut. But they both knew he was playing. Jason had been cooking a lot lately and was really taking a liking to it. 

On the day before Thanksgiving, the day they would be baking pies and making the sauce, Jason held a bag of fresh cranberries in both hands. He shifted the bag, feeling the hardness of the berries. He’d never cooked with cranberries before and was surprised that they weren’t soft like blueberries. 

There were two pies in the oven, apple and pumpkin. The kitchen smelled of sugar and spice, and his mom had Christmas carols playing on the record player in the adjacent living room. 

“I thought Christmas had to wait until after Thanksgiving,” Jason said as he watched his mom line up all of the ingredients they would need. 

“That’s for decorations,” she answered. “We decorate on Saturday, but we need something festive while we work, so unless you want to dig up some harvest songs, this is it.”

Jason looked at the recipe his mom had written on a notecard. It was creased, and splattered, and written in pencil that had badly faded. “How can you read this?”

“Oh, it’s more of a suggestion. We can wing it.”

“Wing it?” Jason laughed. When he’d helped with the pies, she had insisted on spooning the flour into measuring cups and carefully leveling it to get the exact amount. “I thought we had to be so careful with the measuring.”

“That’s for baking. This is cooking. You bake with your brain; you cook with your soul.”

Jason rolled his eyes, but filed that one away. Sometimes his parents dropped bits of wisdom that he secretly jotted down in a hidden notebook. Though he would die of embarrassment if anyone found out. 

“Okay, dump the cranberries in the pot. We’ll do two bags for an extra big batch.” 

Jason poured and winced at the sound of hard red berries clattering against metal. They added some orange juice and brown sugar, then stirred the mix into a gritty, soupy mess. 

“Let’s see, three tablespoons for each batch.” His mom held a tablespoon over the pot, pouring cognac that sloshed well over the spoon and into the mixture.

“Whoa! You’re kinda over-pouring there,” Jason laughed. But his mom only shook her head, clarifying that the recipe called for generous tablespoons. 

After giving the pot a stir, she put on the lid and turned on the burner. While the pot heated, she turned to the counter and pulled out a folded bit of cloth and a roll of twine. 

“What’s that for?” Jason was intrigued by the loosely woven cloth that frayed as his mom cut off a large square. The bag it came out of said it was cheesecloth and that it was 100% natural cotton.

“This is for the spice pouch.” Her answer was casual, but Jason had never heard of such a thing. “See, we’re going to put the spices in here. Peppercorns, orange peels, cloves, red pepper flakes, and a cinnamon stick. Then we’ll bundle it up… Here, hold the edges.”

She had dumped the spices onto the square as she spoke, then pulled the edges up, and had Jason hold it like a little purse while she tied it closed with a long piece of twine. 

“Ta da! A little bundle to spice the sauce.” She then dropped the bag into the pot, poking it under the hard berries and gritty, sugared orange juice. “See if you keep part of the twine out, you can wrap it around the pot handle like this… and now it will be easy to remove when it’s done.”

Jason looked into the pot. Instead of seeing anything that resembled the thick, lustrous cranberry sauce he had come to love, he saw a sad soup of loose berries with a bit of fabric and string tossed in like crumpled trash in the pond behind their house.

This did not look promising. 

“Um, do you think there’s too much orange juice?” Jason asked. “Or cognac?” 

His mom had been sipping a glass of cognac while laying out the ingredients, and he wondered if it had affected her ability to cook. 

“Nope, it’s perfect.” She began rolling up the unspooled twine and asked Jason to flip over the record. “You can put on a different one if you want.”

Jason flipped through the holiday section of his parents’ record collection. There was a jazz one he’s always liked that showed a man in a Santa hat playing a trumpet. By the time he found it and went back to the kitchen, his mom had cleared away the ingredients and was wiping the counter. 

He peered into the pot, but it was still sad cranberry soup. 

“Uh, when will it be cranberry sauce?” 

“Oh, it takes a while. I forget. Maybe 30 minutes or so?”

Jason didn’t like the vagueness of her answer. She’d precisely set timers for the pies and was now peering in at them with care. Jason tried to think of a way to distract himself from staring into the pot. 

“So, uh, did you cook with your mom when you were my age?”

“Oh, a little,” his mom answered. “My mom was the baker, and my dad was the cook. So she taught me to measure and mix carefully, while he taught me to experiment and be free to follow my tastes.”

Jason thought about that, wondering about the grandparents who had died when he was too young to remember them. 

“Is that what they were like? Was your mom, like, really serious, and your dad really fun?” 

“Not at all!” His mom flashed Jason a smile, then went to the living room to pull an old photo album off a bookcase’s lowest shelf. She flipped it open, and Jason saw pictures of his mom as a little girl with parents who both kind of looked like her, and a little like him, too.

“My mom was very creative and always made us laugh. But most of what she made had strict rules, like her sewing and baking. The baking I could do, but the sewing… that was not my thing. My dad was a little more serious. He spent a lot of time working, either at his job or out in the garden. But when he cooked, he really let go. Playing music and telling stories.”

They were quiet for a moment, listening to the music and looking at the old album. 

“Who’s that?” Jason asked, pointing at a young boy riding bikes with his mom. She launched into a story about the kids in her neighborhood, and Jason wondered what it had been like to grow up without the internet. 

After several minutes, his mom suggested that Jason stir the sauce. He lifted the lid and saw that the juice was now bubbling, and the berries were beginning to swell and burst. They turned down the heat and went back to the album. After every story, Jason stirred the pot, seeing the sauce slowly thicken. 

“I think it’s ready,” his mom said after Jason gave it a final stir. It was still a little soupy, but she said it would thicken as it cooled. Jason marveled at how it had gone from hard berries and liquid to a smooth pot of thick, delicious-smelling sauce. 

They turned off the heat, and Jason fished the spice packet out of the mixture. 

“Careful,” his mom warned, showing him how to gently squeeze the bag’s excess juice into the pot. 

“That’s it?” Jason asked 

“Yep, we’re done. Thanks for your help.”

His mom closed the photo album, and Jason felt a sense of loss. He wasn’t ready for their cooking session to end. 

“It still needs to cool,” he said, striving for a casual tone. “And there are a few more pages in that book.” 

His mom softly smiled. 

“I guess we might as well finish it. While the cranberry sauce cools.”

“Yeah, I mean, we have a little more time.”

“Yeah,” his mom agreed, nudging his shoulder with her own before reopening the album. “We have more time.”

The End 

Thanks for listening. Well, that wasn’t where I thought this might go. When I started writing, I thought I might have them make cranberry sauce, only to have several guests also show up with their own cranberry sauces the next day. We’ve had that happen at past Thanksgivings, which is fine by me. There’s never too much cranberry sauce!

As we head into the holidays, please consider checking out my novels. Books make great gifts for friends, family, or as a treat for yourself. You can learn about my novels at my website, SusanQuilty.com, or by searching for “Susan Quilty” wherever you buy books. There are also links in the show notes. 

Until next time, try a little free writing of your own. Let go of any planning and see where your imagination takes you. 

[Light piano music]