Cranberries. They’ve been a part of my life since I was conceived. I’m certain my mother ate them while pregnant, and soon after I was off the bottle and on real food, I’m certain she fed them to me. I have never stopped eating them. If I had a penny for every cranberry I’ve eaten, I’d be a millionaire with growing investments.
Each October, we were sent to the woods with pails to pick berries. By the end of October, my siblings and I had picked enough cranberries to make dozens of bottles of ‘jam’.
I call it jam. Some call it spread. Others call it sauce. To me, it was jam because that’s what I put on my sandwich. If it was a successful pick, we had enough jam to do us until the following October. Most years, it was a successful pick.
While most endured the tangy taste of the red berry with turkey at Christmas time, I ate it every day. Every day. From primary to grade 12, I took a cranberry sandwich to school with me for lunch. While others were having peanut butter and jam sandwiches or egg sandwiches, I enjoyed the sour red berry squished between two slices of bread. Mmm.
Diane McGyver 