November 23: Eat a Cranberry Day

Today is Eat a Cranberry Day. If you decide to properly celebrate this, here are ten things you need to know about what you're eating.

1. Cranberries are native to North America and the Latin name for the plant is Vaccinium macrocarpon. In Britain, there is a genus of cranberry called Vaccinium oxycoccos.
2. Cranberries are best known for cranberry sauce, which is traditionally eaten with Turkey at Christmas and also, for Americans and Canadians, at Thanksgiving. It may have become traditional thanksgiving fare after starving English settlers in Massachusetts were introduced to the fruit by Native Americans.
3. The name cranberry derives from "craneberry", first named by early European settlers in America who thought the flowers looked like a crane's head and neck. They are sometimes called mossberries in Canada, and bearberries in the USA (because bears eat them). The British version, Vaccinium oxycoccos, were called fenberries because they grew in fenland.
4. Commercials for cranberry sauce and juice often show harvesters wading through Water which has led to a belief that they grow in water. They don't. They grow on sandy bogs, but the cranberry fields are flooded for the harvest. The berries float, so the water makes it easier to pick them.
5. The cranberry plant is a low, creeping shrub which can grow up to 2 metres (7 ft) long and 5 to 20 centimetres (2 to 8 in) in height.
6. The flowers are dark Pink, and the berries are bigger than the leaves of the plant.
7. Native Americans used cranberries for food, medicine and fabric dye. The berries are a natural source of lutein, which is great for eye health, and quercetin, which acts as an anti-inflammatory. They are commonly consumed as a remedy for urinary tract infections, although recent studies have shown there is no evidence of any benefit.
8. About 768 million pounds of cranberries are grown in the U.S. each year; Americans consume about 400 million pounds of them annually. There are eight places in the U.S. named Cranberry, or a close variation of the word.
9. A bottle of cranberry juice typically contains about 4,400 berries.
10. Cranberry juice is an ingredient of the Cosmopolitan cocktail.

New! 

A Very Variant Christmas

Last year, Jade and Gloria were embroiled in a bitter conflict to win back their throne and their ancestral home. This year, Queen Jade and Princess Gloria want to host the biggest and best Christmas party ever in their palace. They invite all their friends to come and bring guests. Not even the birth of Jade's heir just before Christmas will stop them.

The guest list includes most of Britain's complement of super-powered crime-fighters, their families and friends. What could possibly go wrong?

Gatecrashers, unexpected arrivals, exploding Christmas crackers and a kidnapping, for starters.

Far away in space, the Constellations, a cosmic peacekeeping force, have suffered a tragic loss. They need to recruit a new member to replace their dead colleague. The two top candidates are both at Jade and Gloria's party. The arrival of the recruitment delegation on Christmas Eve is a surprise for everyone; but their visit means one guest now faces a life-changing decision.

Meanwhile, an alliance of the enemies of various guests at the party has infiltrated the palace; they hide in the dungeon, plotting how best to get rid of the crime-fighters and the royal family once and for all. Problem is, they all have their own agendas and differences of opinion on how to achieve their aims.

Not to mention that this year, the ghosts who walk the corridors of the palace on Christmas Eve will be as surprised by the living as the living are by them.

Available from Createspace, Amazon and Amazon Kindle