Ginger Pear Cranberry Sauce with Port

INGREDIENTS (creatively based on another recipe from Cooks Illustrated, November 1999):

3/4 cup water
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. table salt
1 generous inch of grated fresh ginger
2 tbsp. orange zest
1 12 oz. bag of fresh cranberries, picked through
2 medium firm, ripe pears, peeled and then diced into 1/2 inch chunks
2 tbsp. good quality ruby port

1) Bring the first 6 ingredients to a boil over high heat in a nonreactive sauce pan, stirring to dissolve the sugar.
2) Combine cranberries and pears and return to boil.
3) Reduce heat to medium and simmer until it reaches the sauce consistency of your choosing (it will thicken more after it cools)--at minimum after about 2/3 of the berries have popped open, five minutes or longer.
4) Add port and cool at room temperature and serve, or stow it in the fridge for up to 7 days.

THE BEER:

We aren't drinking beer at the moment. Before you grow sad on our behalf, because you're doubtless a sympathetic soul, we ARE drinking a cocktail Gabe just made up out of the blue (recipe following). But we had beer earlier, at Amsterdam Ale House (where else?), and it was delicious. A Southern Tier Unearthly Imperial India Pale Ale. Let's talk more about that beer later, because I have no intention whatsoever of pairing it with cranberry sauce. We at Beer Meets Food just wanted to wish you a merry Thanksgiving.

THE COCKTAIL:

1/2 oz. lemon juice
1/2 oz. pomegranate juice
2 oz. gin
1/2 oz. simple syrup
2 dashes orange bitters

1) Combine, with ice. If you don't like sweet cocktails, don't add quite as much simple syrup.
2) Mix. Shake.
3) Pour into cocktail glass.
4) Drink.
5) Start thinking about what you'll drink next.

THE MERRINESS:

Be merry! Be bright! We are thankful for a number of things, and I'll do a short list here:

1) We are thankful we can cook, so people actually come all the way to our house and merrify our Thanksgiving.
2) We are thankful for the means to cook it in the first place.
3) We are thankful that raw sewage is not at this very moment seeping through the ceiling of our bathroom. Long story. (As it was last Thanksgiving. Long story. Not a short story. But as the Beatles said, It's Getting Better All the Time.)