Cranberry Can't Be Delicious - Can It?

The holidays are upon us. Let the feasting begin. We are rapidly approaching Thanksgiving Day. The first day of the holiday season when more things will be unmercifully stuffed than just the turkey. The day when all diets go to the wayside for at least one day, right?

Thanksgiving is a day for my family that is rich with traditions and fond memories of Turkey Days gone by. I remember waking up early on Thanksgiving to the sounds of my mother clanging around in the kitchen (which was just outside my bedroom) at something like five in the morning chopping celery and onions to go into the cornbread stuffing that will soon be placed into the huge turkey that takes up the whole kitchen table. Or at least it seemed that way to me as a small child. I knew it would only be an hour or so and I would start to smell that heavenly scent of roasted turkey skin wafting from the oven, only to tease me for hours of what was to come later in the day.

I always felt sorry for my mom having to get up so early to put the turkey on, but it had to cook for a few hours for such a large turkey. When I became a mom and the duty was passed on to me I found out first hand the sacrifice she made for her family for such a feast. Years later I was watching a cooking show about Thanksgiving meals. The chef suggested instead of roasting one huge turkey to buy two smaller turkeys and roast one first to be ready to present at the feasting table and the second one could continue to cook and be ready to cut up for seconds. Brilliant! Why didn't I think of that? What a time saver. Then I wouldn't have to get up at the crack of dawn and wrestle with that huge beast of a turkey.

Did I ever do it that way? No. Why? Tradition. Presenting a smaller turkey on the table just didn't give that wow factor that I was used to. And besides, that's how my mother always did it.

I once heard a story of a lady that was making a roast for a dinner party for the first time. She bought a very large roast and was in the kitchen preparing it for the oven when her husband came in. Just about that time she proceeded to cut the ends off of the roast and put it into the pan. Her husband watched her as she carefully placed the it into the oven to cook. He asked her why she cut off the ends of that gorgeous roast and she replied "because that's the way my mother always did it". Later in the week she began to think about the question her husband asked, so she promptly called her mother and asked her why she cut the ends off of the roast when she cooked it. Her mother's reply was "so it would fit into my small oven".

Tradition. Which brings me to the title of this post about cranberry. Some of you may be wondering what cranberry is and some of you may have already figured it out. Cranberry is what my kids so smartly named the cranberry sauce I serve at Thanksgiving that comes out of a can. You have seen it I'm sure. It's shaped just like the can when it comes out and then you just slice it. And of course, being the traditional person that I am, I did the same thing my mother did. Serve cranberry sauce. One Thanksgiving I actually made cranberry sauce from scratch using fresh cranberries that I sauteed until it was tender and then added sugar, orange peel and a few other things to make it delicious, or so I thought. No one would eat it! They liked their cranberry. Never again did I attempt to change that tradition and every year all of the cranberry sauce is eaten.

I love to cook for holidays and special occasions and I love to try new recipes. But what I know for sure, as Oprah would say, is, you can't mess with tradition in my family. And that's okay with me. Some people don't like traditions and I have to say that there are some that are very stale and outdated and could use some updating. I think tradition gives us a sense of familiarity and memories of good times together. In this day when things are so chaotic and seem out of control we need familiarity. So, let the feasting begin, and bring on the cranberry!