Homemade Cranberry Sauce in a Pinch

I have been getting into the habit of planning my menus weekly.  This goes hand in hand with my weight loss successes and being a little more organized; a passion of mine!  However, on this particular lunchtime day, as I was preparing my favorite sandwich of roast beef, brown mustard, havarti cheese, alfalfa sprouts, and a tablespoon or two of cranberry sauce, I noticed that someone had finished the smallish portion of cranberry sauce left in the fridge!

As my sandwich lay open and ready for it's crowning glory, I lamented on the lack of this very necessary condiment to achieve the perfection of flavor my taste buds demanded.  Suddenly I realized that I had a partial bag of whole cranberries in the freezer.  Could I whip up a passable sauce before my lovely flax seed bread dried out?  I was determined to try!

I knew that generally the sauce prepared on the stove took a while to simmer down into the perfect consistency of the sauce, however, I was not willing to wait that long!  Why not speed things up in the microwave oven?  I wasn't after a complex sauce using several spices coveting a spot on a Thanksgiving table, after all.  No, just a simple sauce of cranberries and a little sugar cooked down to nice jelled consistency.

I went for it!  I had about a cup of cranberries.  I added 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/2 cup of water and put it in the microwave for about 4-6 minutes.  I'd like to say I let it cool for a few minutes, but no, I was hungry after all!  I put ice cubes into a mixing bowl and set the dish of sauce into the ice and stirred like a maniac, begging it to cool quickly.  Eureka!  It worked!  Better yet, it was delicious...