Cranberry sauce is the yin to the Thanksgiving turkey's yang with its perfect flavor balance of sweet and tart.

Get this cranberry sauce recipe along with many others after the jump.

Korean Kalbi with Tofu and Oyster Mushrooms. Photo: Special*Dark, Flickr.

• The ins and outs of harvesting cranberries: the history, the pros, how the good ones "bounce," plus a cranberry time line.
• Animal Farm's Jersey Cow butter hits hot spots like French Laundry and Per Se.
• Weymouth's Dunkin Donuts is one of the few in the country that take the "time to make the donuts" slogan to heart, by making the breakfast treats fresh.
• Taking a few steps into the past with a look at Tilly & Salvy's Bacon Street Farm -- a grocery store dating back to 1938.
• Chef Ming Tsai writes about Tokyo's exotic street eats while visiting the city for his dad's 80th birthday.
• The Stork Club will try to bring life back to the corner that used to hold Bob's Southern Bistro.
• A Q&A with Patricia Yeo of Ginger Park.
• Partially prepared foods allow the busy to cook at home under time constraints.
• "The Gastrokid Cookbook" says you shouldn't "cook down" to kids.
• Twenty-six years later, India Quality is traditional fare without the fusion confusion of many new digs.
• Taste Coffee House brings high coffee culture to the Boston area.
• Woo Jung Restaurant serves up Korean food with a homey and familial feel.
• Recipes: Locro, Garlic Ramen Noodles, Beef and Veggie Stir-Fry, Chicken Caesar Salad, Vegetable Curry, Accidental Agrodolce Chicken.

What's going to be on your table this Thanksgiving for dessert? My family is doing a combination of pies and cookies, with a little bit of ice cream to go along side. However, if I weren't in charge of the turkey/stuffing/gravy operation, I'd seriously consider adding this Cornmeal Ricotta Cake with Cranberries to the menu. I love the bright color of the berries and I imagine the texture that the cornmeal adds is a really nice one.

Thanks Sassy Radish, for adding this picture to the Slashfood Flickr pool.

Quick: what are the four fruit species native to North America?

You probably immediately got blueberries and cranberries, for an instant two of four. After speculating about pumpkins before remembering that they are not exclusively indigenous to the Americas, you might have had a eureka moment about concord grapes (three of four). And if you grew up in the American south or plains, and if someone remembered to point them out, you deserve the back pat you gave yourself for remembering pawpaws (four of four, with extra credit if you've ever actually partaken).

Some hate on blueberries, which share the same genus as cranberries, but this time of year, everyone loves the species Vaccinium, whose call name is the cranberry. To Native Americans who introduced cranberries to hungry pilgrims, the plant was called sassamanash, and was known for the same cleansing properties that your urologist and your mother cite today. So, yes, we drink cranberry juice all year long, but along with stuffing (filling if you're Pennsylvania Dutch, or dressing if you're southern, or "pass the platter" if you're an avuncular distant uncle on his second beer before kickoff) cranberry sauce is the signature side dish of Thanksgiving. Here is a crash course on cranberries.

Sure, you can have one of those silly, jiggly mounds of cranberry sauce still shaped like the can it came in, but why not delight in fresh cranberries seasoned with tasty port, courtesy of Bon Appetit and Epicurious?

Cranberry Sauce with Port and Cinnamon

Ingredients:

1 cup ruby Port
2 cinnamon sticks, broken in half
1 cup dried cranberries
1 12-ounce bag of fresh cranberries
3/4 cup water
1/4 cup sugar

• Bring the port and cinnamon to a boil in a heavy saucepan. Reduce heat to medium and simmer for 5 minutes.
• Add dried cranberries, simmer until slightly softened (about 3 minutes). Then add the fresh cranberries, water, and sugar. Bring to a boil, stirring until sugar dissolves.
• Reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer until sauce thickens, the color darkens, and the berries collapse -- stirring often (about 20 minutes).
  
• Transfer sauce to bowl, remove cinnamon sticks.

This can be made 3 days ahead -- cover, chill, then bring to room temperature before serving.

If you live in New York and have walked by Rockefeller Center today, you were probably taken aback. Oh no wait, if you're a New Yorker, you're never taken aback.

You think you've seen everything? Well, Ocean Spray, for the third year, has constructed a sizable pit at Rockefeller Center and filled it with a cranberry bog. They call it "The Big Apple Bog." The bog will be moving next to L.A.'s Kodak theater, and then to Boston. The purpose? Education, and the celebration of the cranberry harvest!

The people wading around in there are real cranberry farmers, and are there to answer questions. There's also cranberry farm equipment placed around the square. Have a look in the gallery!

Though I claim to be a Slashfoodie, I can't bake to save my life. I try. I really give it my best shot every time I slip into that stained apron and 4" stiletto heels so I can comfortably reach the countertop, but nine times out of 10, the results of my efforts are always a far cry from whatever is photographed in the cookbook from which I bake. I just don't have the discipline to get all my ingredients together and I really don't have the patience to measure everything so...exactly.

Thankfully, drop cookies based on classic chocolate chip are made for people like me because they're fairly forgiving. Granted, you can't go throwing things on a whim into a mixing bowl and just hope for the best. You still have to measure a few things, and you can't leave basic chemical things out like butter, eggs, and other leaveners that affect the cookie's texture, but adding and substituting flavorings is not a problem. Dried cranberries and white chocolate chunks in place of plain old chocolate chips? That's perfect for the devil who bakes frauda and needs to turn something out for 1) the Holidays and 2) a Cookie-a-Day challenge.

These White Chocolate Chunk and Cranberry Cookies quite possibly the easiest cookies to make that still say "Holidays!" Recipe after the jump:

Yes, I know, every day this week has had a Happy Hour recipe, but hey, it's Christmas!

This is the Mistletoe and Holly, a cocktail that not only has an appropriate holiday name but also has a great red and white color scheme going on. Sort of looks like Santa's suit. It's from the book Hot Drinks, from Mary Lou and Robert J. Heiss.

Who here eats cranberries or drinks cranberry juice on a regular basis? It's really popular here in New England and one of the basic fruits/juices. Beyond cranberry sauce at holidays dinners I mean. According to Wikipedia, cranberries are a major crop in Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, New Jersey, Wisconsin, and parts of Canada.

Our friend Jade over at Cooking For 2 has a great recipe for Cranberry Cake. Like all of the recipes at her blog, it's very easy to follow. Full recipe after the jump (but visit her site too for a lot of great things to make).

I've always been a fan of baking with cranberries. I have a recipe for cranberry bread that I've been making since I was eight years old (which I'll post as soon as I make it this season) and I often use a combination of cranberries and apples in crisps and crumbles. I spotted this Cranberry Upside Down Cake over at the Urban Vegan on Tuesday and it called to me. It also has the added benefit of being a vegan recipe, perfect for those holiday gatherings with family who have dietary limitations (you could easily un-veganize it if you so desired).

It just occurred to me that I've never had a pie that has more than one fruit in it. I've had dozens (if not a hundred) apple pies over the years, blueberry pie, cherry pie (not a big fan), and pies filled with other foods such as custard and pecan. But I've never had a pie that combined two fruits before.

But I plan on making this one, courtesy of Martha Stewart, the Autumn Harvest Pie. It has three fruits in it: apples, pears, and cranberries. The cranberries worry me a little bit. I'm thinking they might overwhelm the flavors of the apples and the pears, but I'm going to give this a shot. Full recipe after the jump.

Last Christmas, my mom decided that she wanted to make a batch of scones on Christmas morning. She looked through her cookbooks and scoured the internet, finally settling on a Cranberry-Orange scone recipe (I believe she got it off the internet, but I don't know the source). That morning, she quickly stirred up the batter in order to get it in the oven before the turkey needed to go in. When it came out, there was a line of people waiting for the scones, as they had filled the house with a hypnotically good smell.

This is the perfect recipe for a busy morning, because as long as you have buttermilk (you can also fake buttermilk by stirring a tablespoon of lemon juice into a cup of milk) on hand, all the other ingredients are fairly ordinary. You can even mix all the dry ingredients together the night before you want to bake them to hurry things along in the morning.

My brother was the cook in one of the restaurants I worked in several years ago, and he made a really great chicken salad that had grapes in it. I have to remember to get the recipe from him one of these days.

In the meantime, the Kitchen Monkey has a recipe I have to try, for Grilled Chicken Salad with Sage, Almonds, and Cranberries. There are many ways to make chicken salad (and I'm sure you'll tell us how you make yours in the comments below!), and this one looks like it's worth making today. There's still a couple of hours before lunch! Full recipe after the jump.

Did you know that states have "official" foods. Yup, and Massachusetts is no exception. The foods include Boston Cream Pie, cranberries, baked beans, chocolate chip cookies, and corn muffins (corn muffins?).

Gridskipper takes that list of foods and tells us what restaurants in Boston serve the best ones. For example, though Boston Cream Pie was invented at the Omni Parker House Hotel (also home of the Parker House Rolls), you can get the best one at The Oak Room at the Copley Plaza Hotel. For beans, head on over to the Blue Ribbon BBQ. They're not traditional baked beans, but they're great (and I can vouch for this place - best BBQ I've ever had. If they were closer to my house I'd probably eat there twice a week).

[thanks to Jade Walker]

Although it is still cold in many parts of the country, temperatures here in Southern California shot up to almost summer-like highs over the past few days. The sudden heat has cause me - and many others - to turn away from hot soup and "comfort food" cookbooks and turn back to salads and other cool, light fare. This salad is idea for moving from winter into spring, although you could make it all year round, because it incorporates fresh oranges, dried cranberries and salty-sweet candied nuts, all of which are frequently used in late fall and winter dishes and desserts. These sweet salad components are on a bed of mixed baby greens and diced avocado. I dressed the whole salad with a heavily vinegar-based dressing (a citrus flavored vinegar mixed with a bit of oil, salt and pepper) to enhance the brightness of all of the components.