Give Your Body Thanks This Thanksgiving (Cranberry Sauce Recipe)
Too Tired After A Thanksgiving Feast?
When you've overdosed on a Thanksgiving feast, the sour tart taste of cranberries 
refreshes your mind and stimulates your palate with a gush of saliva and juiciness.
Did you know sour is the "juicy" taste? From saliva to the skin, from your liver to your GI tract, sourness triggers your body to produce saliva and floods all your glands with juiciness. Digestive juices aid your body in protein digestion. The result, cranberries help your tummy tackle heavy complex foods that are difficult to digest.
Digesting Fats for the Holidays
Sour taste increases bile production from the liver. Bile breaks up fat into little tiny bits that are easier to digest, a process called emulsification, helping your body manage an overload of rich Thanksgiving yumminess. Cranberries in particular promote good cholesterol. Orange zest stimulates metabolism and reduces stomach stagnation - effective for moving the 'bomb' in your stomach after a hearty Thanksgiving meal.
Sour Detoxifies the Blood
By flushing bile, sour taste assists the liver in detoxifying the blood. You can experience this detoxification as relaxation and refreshment of the eyes. The eyes are the window to the liver and relax whenever toxic liver heat is released from the body. Cranberry is high in antioxidants which detoxifies free radicals. It is also rich in beta-carotene, a liver restorative and blood alternative.
Juicy or Dry?
If the roof of your mouth is rough and dry after drinking cranberry juice,you've experienced astringent taste, one of the six fundamental tastes in Ayurveda. Astringent taste tightens and tones tissues. It is cooling and reduces inflammation. However, astringency is also drying, and will aggravate people with persistent dryness.
Cranberries are an astringent fruit. Their astringency helps them balance the dampness of their natural habitat: the swampy cranberry bog. Despite the gush of saliva from their sourness, cranberries are a strong diuretic and ultimately dehydrating. This recipe includes a sweetener, which reduces cranberries' astringency somewhat. Pungent ginger opposes the cold quality of the cranberry, warming the flavors and making the sauce digestible for all.
Ingredients
- 12 oz cranberry
- 1/4 inch ginger (fresh)
- 1/2 whole orange
- 1/4 tsp orange zest
- 3 tbsp coconut sugar
Preparation
Juice the orange. Chop up the zest. Mix together all ingredients plus 1/4c water. Bring to a boil, then lower heat. Simmer, uncovered, until jam-like. As cranberries soften mash with a potato masher.
What is your favorite healthy side dish for thanksgiving?
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