Cranberry Juice

 A quick search of Facebook to try to find out how long I've been making cranberry juice tells me I was making it in 2014 - not sure if that's the first time I made it or not. Vince doesn't drink it as much as I do but we usually go through two quarts per week but sometimes we use a third one. I would like to get about 80 quarts of it made but not sure that will happen. I don't think I have that many quart jars empty and I am NOT buying more jars.

This is the recipe I use to make the juice.

A friend posted yesterday that she had canned 64 quarts of the cranberry juice yesterday. She said she canned 99 quarts last year and has 28 remaining so with the 64 and the 28, she has 92 jars for the coming year. 

My day of juice making didn't start out so great. I had the large All American canner full of water on the basement stove, put the first few jars in and one of them cracked. The jars were hot, the water in them was hot, the water in the canner was hot - no idea why it cracked but all the contents poured out into the canner of boiling water. I pulled out the remaining jars, took them upstairs and canned the rest in the kitchen in the water bath canner. I started with 21 jars but ended up with 20 after the one cracked.

You can see what they look like when they first come out of the canner.

This is a jar of last year's juice once I strained the berries out. It's pretty strong so once I drain the berries, I will fill the jar with water and that's the "juice" we drink. There's always a debate over whether it's infused water or juice. In reality, it's probably infused water but it's delicious and I feel like it's healthy so I drink it almost every day with breakfast.

It's very pretty, very tasty and festive!

Twenty quarts done, at least 40 more to go . . hopefully 60.

Once the berries are strained out, here are a few things I do with them:

1. Mix them with chopped apples or pears and add them to overnight oats. 
2. Add them to cranberry bread, or Sourdough English Muffins (you may notice I fed my starter and it's sitting on the counter - I make English Muffins at least every other week and add cranberries.)

3. One of my favorites is Morning Glory Bran Muffins. I will often leave out the raisins and add cranberries.

4. At some point, I will save the leftover cranberries, freeze them until I get enough, then mix with some fresh cranberries and make cranberry sauce to can. I will add a little pectin since the berries that were in the water may not have a lot of "gel" capacity left in them. We use cranberry sauce with rotisserie chicken, even on smoked chicken sometime . . it's not just for the holidays at our house. I will can it in half pint jars so we don't have it go to waste after the jars are opened. Homemade cranberry sauce is also really good on cream cheese or Brie with crackers!