Food & Drink 

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Berry Christmas

If you’re looking for ways to add a little colour and a lot of flavour to your table this Christmas, don’t forget the cranberries

The cranberry has been a festive favourite for hundreds of years, ever since Native Americans mashed up the fruit and mixed it with dried deer meat and fat to make pemmican. This stiff paste dried into a hard, chewy consistency that served as a filling meal and stayed fresh through long New England winters. In 1816, Dutch and German settlers in the New World planted the first ever "crane berry" crop (so-called for their blossom’s resemblance to the head and bill of a crane) on Cape Cod, using the fruit as a natural dye for rugs, blankets and clothing.

Besides the 5500 acres of crops cultivated in Chile, Quebec and British Columbia, all the cranberries we eat today still hail from America. They spend their youth bobbing around in the sandy bogs and marshes of Massachusetts, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Oregon or Washington until they’re harvested each year in late September.

Cranberry enthusiasts have long recognised the medicinal power of this hardy little fruit. In fact, the Native Americans were known to bathe their wounds in it. Modern research now shows that drinking a glass of cranberry juice each day can be 10 times as effective as conventional antibiotics at killing urinary bacteria. The same glass will also provide 130% of your recommended daily allowance of Vitamin C, which aids in red blood cell formation, helps the body absorb iron and plays a key role in warding off viral infections like the common cold.

Did we mention that cranberries taste great too? They pack a sweet and sour punch which complements heavier foods, especially cold weather dishes like roast turkey, venison or even pumpkin soup. When you buy cranberries, make sure they look bright and plump – avoid ones that are soft, crushed or shrivelled (you may not want to conduct this test in the supermarket, but a fresh cranberry should bounce).

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