When it comes to Thanksgiving, one staple that everyone looks forward to is cranberry sauce. However, people who want to save time usually settle for supermarket-bought cranberry sauce — the gelatinous, canned version that has little resemblance to fresh cranberries.  

Why settle for artificially flavored and (most likely) preservative-loaded canned cranberries when you can make your own delicious cranberry sauce at home? Here’s how you can take it up a notch: Ferment the cranberries to bring out their natural sweetness and flavor.

This Festive Fermented Cranberries recipe is pretty simple, but the fermentation process takes a few days, so I suggest making this ahead of time so it will be ready for Thanksgiving. You can also use your leftover fresh cranberries from Thanksgiving to make this healthy snack instead of having them go to waste.

Ingredients
Prep Time: 15 minutes | Fermenting Time: 4 to 7 days

•    1 12-ounce bag of fresh whole organic cranberries (not frozen)
•    Juice from 1 organic orange
•    1 small thumb of fresh ginger, minced (1 – 2 tsp.)
•    ½ cup freshly juiced celery
•    1 organic granny smith apple, juiced
•    ¼ packet Mercola culture starter (optional)
•    1 cinnamon stick
•    1 whole clove
•    2 tsp. monk fruit
•    ½ cup filtered water
•    1 Tbsp. honey (optional)