Cranberry Sauce



Picture by Skinny Taste 

Well it was always something I overlooked at the Thanksgiving table when I was a kid. That cranberry sauce, with the lines from the can still visible, never appealed to be. It came as a surprise to most people however because I love cranberry anything, juice, bread, muffins etc... but not cranberry sauce. That is until I had real fresh cranberry sauce. Now I can't have a Thanksgiving meal (or leftovers) without it. I have made it in the past the traditional whole cranberry way, with water, sugar, and cranberries boiled on the stove. This year I am going to be making a new recipe that I got from my favorite healthy cooking blog Skinny Taste (you will recall the sweet potato pie came from that sight too). This gal has done a knock out job on making delicious recipes with less fat and calories without adding fake phony food and keeping the taste.

So this year to lighten up our cranberry sauce by reducing the 2 cups of white sugar that is usually used to sweeten and extract the juices from the cranberries, we are going to be having a Cranberry Pear Sauce. The recipe still uses the whole cranberries but uses ripe pears to help sweeten the cranberries and also uses Agave Nectar.

I did a little research on why agave nectar was being used as a substitute for sugar and found basically two big points. The first is that it is sweeter then sugar and less viscus then honey so it

makes for a good sweetener, the second was that it doesn't effect blood sugar levels like sugar does. So even thought packs 60 calories per table spoon (vs 40 calories in sugar) it isn't swing blood sugar levels and it is 1.5 times sweeter then sugar so you can use less and still satisfy that sweet tooth. I guess it really isn't that new a thing but I'm not diabetic and don't know many who are (that I'm making food with at least), so it is new to me.

I can't wait to try this recipe and please check out Gina's Skinny Taste as well.