Tag Archives: Thanksgiving

Cranberry Sauce Musings

food, Thanksgiving,

The varieties of tastes, and capacity for creativity, of humans never ceases to amaze me. That’s one reason I became a folklorist. And, since it’s almost Thanksgiving, let’s take cranberry sauce as an example.

Cranberry sauce, in one or more of its many iterations, is de rigeur at most Thanksgiving tables. (But, even it’s absence would say something about the Thanksgiving meal group’s preferences.) As a native North American fruit whose side dish pedigree goes back, or so “folklore” has it, to the imaginary First Thanksgiving, it is fitting.

But what variety of cranberry sauce graces the table? For millions, apparently, it is the fast and convenient comfort of canned cranberry sauce, which was invented by a lawyer in 1912. A reported 4 million pounds of cranberries sacrifice their existence to the canned cranberry industry each year.

Fresh cranberries also have their devotees, though only a shockingly low five percentage of cranberries are sold fresh, and not all those make their way into sauce. (What this says about America is not the topic here, but does give one pause.)

Okay, I am a member of Team Fresh. And, as my Thanksgiving gift to you all, here (see below) is the recipe I use. It’s great on “day of” but also sublime mixed with mayo on turkey sandwiches, or mixed into yoghurt or oatmeal. Good with other meat meals too. As it is usually still hanging on til the rest of the holiday season, I personally find a lot of uses for it.

Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving, all, despite what is going on around the world. May your table include your own traditional cranberry confection along with great memories.

Thanksgiving Fresh Cranberry and Ginger Sauce

1 pound (or slightly more) fresh cranberries

2 cups sugar

1 cup orange juice

1/2 cup water (or more orange juice if you like)

Zest from one orange

1-2 TBS fresh ginger (how much do you like ginger?)

Wash and pick over cranberries and discard any squish nasty ones. Put in a saucepan and brings to a boil. Cook until cranberries “pop” and their shape starts to deconstruct. (The original recipe said ten minutes, but I usually cook it more like 15-20.) It will look runny but sets up when cooled. Enjoy!

Yum!
Serving suggestion: with plain yoghurt and roasted pumpkin seeds.

Thanksgivings Past and Future

Thanksgiving

I’ve been scrolling through my digital photos and reminiscing about the the changing cast of characters, packed around our table on Thanksgivings past. Our usual dining room table, that is, augmented by one or two additional, impromptu addendums to accommodate the crowd. Everyone smiling over the “groaning board” of turkey, trimmings and potluck contributions.

For many years, we joined our friends Nancy and Steve and their family and friends in Upper Marlboro, Maryland for Thanksgiving. After they moved to Delaware we were still invited but decided it was just a bit too far to travel for the day. So we honored the “friends and family” tradition by hosting our own feast with anyone who wasn’t already committed elsewhere. Interns, far from home. People whose families lived too far away for just a long weekend visit. A cousin or two who live nearby.

This year many of us are paring and/or hunkering down, Zooming with family and friends, cooking alternative menus. We are going to make some Indian-inspired dishes and put the turkey off till next week, when we have finished quarantining from our daughter who is visiting from California, luckily for an extended stay through the remaining holidays.

It will be a memorable day and year, one way or the other. Hopefully the story we tell in the future will start like this: “Remember that one Thanksgiving when we all had to stay home because of the pandemic…”

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

Ah, remember when we could just stand near each other and talk…
This was probably our “critical mass” of about 16 guests a few years ago. It has averaged at about 8-10 since then.
Also remember when you could sit around the table after dinner and play silly games like this one where you pass around phrases and draw pictures to illustrate them?
This was a tradition dating from our trips to Nancy and Steve’s feast. Our daughter always baked a chocolate cake because she didn’t like pie. The sentiment is timeless.

Thanksgiving Word Play

Thanksgiving, word play, ,

Thanksgiving comes with lots of food, family and friends – and some fun words.  My 20161124_142636favorite this year is spatchcock, which apparently means partially deconstructing your turkey before you roast it.  (Martha Stewart can explain to you why this is a good idea, I won’t bother.)  It’s a fun word to say — and if one did not know what it meant, you could make up all sorts of interesting fake definitions!  Another item which traditionally graced the Belanus holiday table is rutabagas.  (Though the Belanus-Francis holiday table rarely goes through the trouble – this hard version of a turnip, or swede, is rather a pain to peel as it usually comes covered in some waxy substance, and takes forever to cook to be soft enough to eat.)  Rutabaga, another fun word to say for sure, with roots (so to speak) in a Swedish dialect.  Not to digress, though I will anyway, I recall when our food coordinator for the 1987 Smithsonian Folklife Festival had to try to find a rutabaga totally out of season, in July, for something a cook from Michigan was cooking – I think it was pasties, which has a whole other fun etymology and double meaning…  Hmm.  Then, there are the regional terms for foodstuffs.  Take “stuffing” for instead.  Or, do you call it “dressing”?  Well, in Western Pennsylvania, they call it “filling.”  All making perfect sense, of course.

Happy Thanksgiving weekend to everyone, enjoy some leftover turkey and pie if you have any, and while you are rolling it around your tongue try out some of these Thanksgiving vocabulary words as well.