Easy does it: Thanksgiving must-haves can be made from scratch — or not

No holiday puts on the do-it-all-from-scratch pressure quite like Thanksgiving.

Which is fine if you have the time and talent to pull together an entire feast. The rest of us need to focus and put our energies where they count, making those personally traditional dishes our families couldn't live without. For the rest, you can rely on shortcuts.

But some shortcuts are less obvious than others.

Here are some ideas for from-scratch, easier and easiest versions of holiday must-haves.

Cranberry sauce

• From scratch: Real cranberry sauce — even the fancy stuff — isn't hard to make.

Betty Crocker senior cookbook editor Cheri Olerud suggests dropping raw cranberries, a chopped whole orange, sugar and crystallized ginger into the food processor for a fresh relish.

Rick Rodgers, author of the cookbook "Thanksgiving 101," simmers cranberries, a chopped lemon, garlic, diced onion, jalapeno pepper and crystallized ginger for about 20 minutes. Both taste best if made a day or two ahead.

• Easier: Combine a bag of fresh cranberries, brown sugar and water, then simmer until the berries pop. Chill and serve. For zing, add some finely chopped orange, rind and all, or some orange liqueur.

• Easiest: Dress up the canned stuff. Olerud suggests slicing it and drizzling it with melted orange marmalade and a little grated orange zest. If you're really feeling fancy, substitute orange liqueur for the marmalade.

Lori Powell, food director at Real Simple magazine, suggests picking up a can of chunky cranberry sauce (not jellied), adding chopped fresh apples or even kumquats. A few browned pearl onions (frozen, of course) make it fancy.

Stuffing

• From scratch: For a stuffing rich in flavor, Olerud says to simmer the turkey giblets for a couple of hours, then chop them and add to your bread mixture, using the broth to moisten it.

Rodgers favors a corn bread stuffing with ham, fresh fennel, roasted chestnuts and fresh sage. He suggests vacuum-packed chestnuts rather than roasting them yourself but insists the cornbread be homemade because packaged is too sweet.