Winter Cranberry Bars

Lyndsay Keoho

My nana always baked for the holidays. She liked trying new recipes. One day, my nana came across a recipe called cranberry bars in a very, very old Betty Crocker cookbook. Her husband, my papa, loved any type of baked goods. And he was a great lover of any food that had peaches. When she saw this cranberry recipe she decided that she would try something different.

Everytime I try to talk to my nana about the recipe, she starts to cry in remembrance of my papa. My nana said, "My husband always liked to look over my shoulder when I was baking special cookies and he wanted to try the FIRST one. He always had to have the FIRST one, even when I baked cupcakes for the kids for school. I had to make an extra one FOR HIM, and he would think the kids were taking 11 to school instead of 12. He loved teasing the kids when it came to cookies and cakes. He wanted to hide them so he could have not only the FIRST one, but the LAST one."

When she cut those cranberry bars and asked him to try one, something different, he wanted her to wrap several and put them away for his late night sweet tooth. He loved them. From that time forward, he always made sure she baked those cranberry bars for Christmas.

One Christmas, she sent him to the store to get cranberries, and he came home with a can of whole cranberries. My nana was not very happy about that. But he was such a connoisseur of goodies that he asked her to just try using them. Fresh cranberries were not available that year for whatever reason, so to have HIS cranberry bars, he was willing to substitute using whole cranberries in a can. And guess what--it worked. We never missed a Christmas without having cranberry bars.

My papa passed away a few years ago, and the cranberry bars are always a good way to remember and celebrate him.