Today is Thanksgiving 2022, aka Turkey Day.
One tradition that I always observe is to use canned cranberry sauce on my turkey dinner.
Cranberry sauce reminds me of my childhood because that’s what my family served. There’s no big revelation like Proust’s madeleine when I take a bite, but there are memories and comfort.
In my adulthood, I moved eastward from California, ending up in North Carolina married to a Brooklynite and surrounded by foodies all of whom disdain jellied cranberry sauce.
At Thanksgiving dinner, I proudly open my can and enjoy its contents in the face of ridicule and adversity, giving thanks for my life’s many blessings, including those who don’t understand cranberry sauce.
Yesterday’s New York Times had an informative article, How Cranberry Sauce Gets Its Grooves, describing the history of jellied cranberry sauce. (The online version of this story used the far less poetic title, How Jellied Cranberry Sauce Is Made.) I learned two important things:
- Jellied cranberry sauce was invented in 1912, the year my father was born in Louisiana.
- The Ocean Spray cooperative is owned by 700 family farmers. In other words, I’m indirectly celebrating a century-old farmers’ coöperative*.
- I spelled “coöperative” the way that The New Yorker would as a way of celebrating my east coast family.