101 Miracle Uses for Cranberries (That Don't Involve the Urinary Tract)!

photo credit: Muffet

LTHOUGH MOST of us have heard of the humble cranberry's power to prevent the dreaded urinary tract infection—rated "Number One Date Killer of All Time" by the renowned Urology digest, Feelings of Urgency —did you also know cranberries can attract good karma, extend hamburger's shelf life by at least three years, and bring household parakeets back from the dead?

Well, neither did we! That is, until we wrote the book on cranberries. That's right: Happy Woman's latest offering—101 Miracle Uses for Cranberries (That Don't Involve the Urinary Tract)!"—is coming soon to bookstores everywhere. And for our faithful readers, here's a free Sneak Preview!

Cranberry Recipe for Landing Your Dream Job

1. Write up and print exactly ten copies of your very best résumé.
2. Place résumés in a cedar box with lid.
3. Sprinkle lid generously with organic cranberries and "marinate" résumés for at least 24 hours.
4. Go on ten dream-job interviews and be your natural, charming self.

If you don't get at least one job offer lickety-split, your cranberries were not really certified organic! Sue the co-op immediately!!

Cranberry Relationship Healer

Experiencing love troubles? That's an easy one for the amorous cran! Simply sprinkle the red love berries around your bed while you both sleep on it. In the morning, just to seal the heal, enjoy a romantic breakfast of your favorite oatmeal generously garnished with more love-potion crannies.

If your relationship is not immediately repaired by your last healthy bite, repeat, this time with untested adjunct therapies such as "talking." It's kind of like taking aspirin in conjunction with experimental heart surgery in Thailand. In this example, cranberries are the aspirin! We would never send you to some wacky place like Thailand without giving you time to upgrade your cell service.

Cranberry Do-it-Yourself Oil Change

Who needs to waste hard-earned money on that every-three-month-or-three-thousand mile excuse to lighten your wallet? Obviously, your auto-repair joint has been keeping the magic of cranberries locked in a vault—that is, until we broke the combination!

As every grease monkey knows, the next time you're due for an "oil change," simply pour three tablespoons of fresh cranberries down your car's dip-stick hole. The natural fruit acids will "auto" clean your motor oil and produce a fresh, cran-oil essence through your tailpipe. Free Hint: Adding a single drop of patchouli oil will convince your jealous tailgaters you're headed for a Jefferson Airplane revival! Groovy!!

Natural Cranberry Birth Control

Believe us when we tell you that abstinence does not make the heart grow fonder. It makes the heart go to bars and alleyways looking for some chickie-poo named "Angel" or "Candy" or "Easy Lil."

But you can be on call AND careful with the awesome birth-control properties of the inexpensive, over-the-counter cranberry, known in several countries with successful population control as "the condom in a granola bar."

Yes, for the price of your average cranberry bar snack, you can rest assured that your eggs are completely shielded from frisky sperm by the cranberry's wondrous chemical masking mechanism. Through a process not yet fully understood by medical science, the crafty cran makes your eggs simply disappear from the sperm's radar. One minute, Mr. Sperm is heading straight for his unsuspecting target, and the next, our Ms. Egg may as well have been a planet obliterated by the Klingons, for she is nowhere to be seen!

It's hardly worth mentioning, but just for giggles you may wish to supplement your cran-control with a condom, diaphragm, IUD, pills, or tubal ligation. After all, nothing is 100 percent!