In modern America, the cranberry is a peculiar fruit, one that people seem to have a hard time categorizing. Are they berries in the same sense as their blue name-cousins, to munch raw or with one’s morning cereal? Or are they medicine, sour to the point of bitterness and useful mainly to ward off various ailments? You can find them in their desiccated state year-round in chicken salad and as a topping for mixed greens—but only after they’ve been doped up with enough sugar to become “all natural” candy-like culinary accents. But it’s autumn when we really start seeing them pop up in neighborhoods and villages. They festoon holiday decorations, punctuating the warm colors of fall and the spruce green of winter with their piercing reds. With a harvest season that runs from mid-September through early November, their annual resurgence aligns beautifully with the fall. By far, however, the most common association with the fruit is the sauce (or jelly, or relish) that Americans use to give flavor to the blandest of meat, Thanksgiving turkey. According to Ocean Spray and National Geographic, “Americans devour 80 million pounds of cranberries during Thanksgiving week”—or 20% of the annual yield. That’s a lot of people jumping on the cranberry bandwagon for a brief stretch of time. Then the winter holidays pass, and cranberries fade away as grocery stores fill up with hearts and bunnies. Their luster lost, they resume their nebulous states of powdered supplements, juices, Craisins, and Seabreeze cocktails. Which is all kind of a shame—because cranberries are cool. They’re the only berry you flood to harvest, they’re quintessential locavore fare, and they’re one of the longest continually consumed foods in North America, as well as one of the continent’s very first superfoods.  ...