Canning The Cranberries

​Have you ever seen the aftermath of an exploded, spoiled can of cranberry sauce?
 
When I was a kid, I didn’t like the taste of cranberries.  Mom taught us how to string them with popcorn to make Christmas tree garlands, but eating them?  Nah.  By my teen years, my palate had matured, and I realized Mom’s homemade cranberry relish was pretty darned good.  Made with oranges, a few spices, and not too much sugar, it became my go-to for consuming cranberries.  This was way, way before sweetened dried cranberries—Craisins—were temptingly dangled in front of us on TV like the California dancing raisins’ long lost cousins.
 
The problem with having a mother who made most things from scratch, and very well at that, is almost nothing served by others—individuals or restaurants—measures up.  So I tend to take a pass on canned anything.  Sometimes my Thanksgiving guests will come with donations for the dinner, which is so very thoughtful and nice.  For the record, I prefer fresh flowers or wine as a hostess gift.  But once in a while, that donation is a can of cranberry sauce, which I conveniently forget to open and serve.  At the end of the meal, I’ll politely slap my forehead and apologize for forgetting.  While cleaning up, I feel heartless just tossing it, so the can gets shoved to the back of the pantry.  Perhaps my guilt will go away, and I’ll throw it out in a week or two?
 
Several years go by.  I legitimately forget all about it, and if I haven’t cleaned out the pantry (which I almost never do), disaster strikes.  Purplish-red gooey stuff goes everywhere.  It’s sticky, and it stains, and it’s a pain in the rear to wash absolutely everything down.  True confession here, though—it’s only happened once.  But once was enough.  Some might say I got what I deserved, but I really, really, really hate serving that gelatinous goop.  I don’t know why they call the jellied stuff that slides out of the can cranberry sauce.  It looks and acts more like Jello.  I suppose it tastes like cranberries, in a way.  But it’s a far cry from real cranberries.
 
Another reconfigured and reconditioned Thanksgiving food I can’t stomach is fake mashed potatoes.  There are people who buy a box of dried potato flakes (I guess they’re flakes, I really don’t know), mix them with water or milk, and the resulting mush is supposed to be instant mashed potatoes?  It’s shocking.  That sounds blasphemous on top of unappetizing.  Plus they have all sorts of chemicals added to them.  I guess I don’t understand, because boiling potatoes, then mushing them up with some milk and butter, is one of the easiest things to do in the world of cooking.  There’s nothing complicated about it.
 
The English and Irish were able to do it, for crying out loud.  No offense meant to either nationality, but you are not famous for your great food. We love you for other reasons.  (I do have English and Irish in my mixed-mutt heritage).  And real potatoes taste good.  So I don’t get it.  According to info I found on the Internet, instant mashed potatoes have been through ‘an industrial process’ of cooking, mashing, and dehydrating—resulting in ‘a close approximation’ of mashed potatoes.  Ewwww.  Sounds yummy.  Not.  Unless you’re cooking for Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters, where he uses a gallon of mashed potatoes as a sculpture medium, please try to do it yourself at least once.  Your grandmother would be so proud.
 
What I never figured out was—why Teri Garr made enough potatoes to satisfy a famished fire department when they had three little kids who each probably consumed a couple of forkfuls.  But then Spielberg would have had to make Dreyfuss raid his kids’ Playdough stash, and that would have been too hard?
 
There’s a lot I don’t understand about movies.  Like why Bryce Dallas Howard’s heels didn’t snap and break while doing all that running from dinosaurs—through the forest, over rocks, on asphalt—those were some impressive shoes.  Or why babysitters open the closet or basement door, when they know darn well what’s behind it?  I spent much of my adolescence in babysitting mode, and that is just plain insulting.
 
I suppose there’s much I don’t understand about a lot of life’s mysteries.  But I do understand the wonders of homemade, from scratch—food.

​                                                            Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

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