THANKSGIVING WOW: THERE IS ONLY ONE GOOD KIND OF CRANBERRY SAUCE AND IT COMES IN A CAN

There, I Said It

PRELUDE: HOW I LEARNED ABOUT SIN

Thanksgiving in the Jesuits tends to work in one of three ways.

If you’re living in a big community, which at this point means either one of the bigger college communities or a retirement community, the kitchen staff generally is asked to work the holiday and puts on a nice meal. I have to say, I was never really comfortable with this. Priests should not be asking people to serve them on days that are very clearly meant for family. But if you think of a big Jesuit community as sort of like a retirement home for guys that are sometimes not yet retired, but don’t know how to cook (or are younger and don’t care to), it begins to make more sense.

If you are a Jesuit living in a smaller community, one of two things tends to happen: Either the entire community works together to put the meal on—people sign up to cook various parts, make appetizers or to clean dishes (the superior at my last community was the greatest dish washer ever)—like a family, basically.

Or, a small group of guys in the house offer to do (ahem, control) everything. Sometimes they’re great. Sometimes they’re just A LOT. Like, Real Housepriests of Beverly Hills a lot.

(To the guys who insist on cooking the turkey every damn year, Baby, I get nesting and control issues, but JESUS.)

My first contact with Real Housepriests was sort of a con job. They’d put up an “Everybody pitches in” sign. I signed up to cook my grandmother’s mashed sweet potatoes recipe, which is amazing. But then I was told those sweet potatoes did not “go” with the turkey. (30 years later, I still have no idea what that means.)

And on this oh so special culinary occasion which our Real Housepriests curated, I encountered for the first time something that I had never in my life heard of or seen: Homemade cranberry sauce.

And that’s how I learned that this really is a fallen world.

CANNED CRANBERRY SAUCE IS THE MANNA IN THE THANKSGIVING DESERT

If you’re not familiar with homemade cranberry sauce: Imagine that you picked cranberries off a bush (or whatever), then threw them and whatever bits of twig and branch still attached into sweet goo, heated it, served it up and got all judgey when someone asked very innocently, “Where is the cranberry sauce? Also what’s with the bear yak in that dish?”

I realize we live in a world where everything organic is better and everything with preservatives is going to kill you, never mind that our grandparents ate what today we would consider garbage out of dumpsters and lived to be 300.  

Mostly I’m with you. I don’t want the things I eat to exist in the world longer than I do. But when it comes to cranberry sauce, I just can’t with the twigs and berries. I want a cylinder of well-preserved cranberry-flavored gelatin.

And there’s a really simply reason for that: It tastes better. Maybe it’s the high sugar content. Who cares? It’s one day a year (-ish—I will admit, I have lived in Jesuit communities where we get a Thanksgiving meal once a month).  

The other great thing about canned cranberry sauce is, it always tastes the same. This is more important than you might immediately appreciate. Consider the holiday of Thanksgiving: Yes, some people have it with the same people every year serving mostly the same dishes. If I were in the suburbs of Chicago tomorrow, I know I’d be attending a great feast on at my Aunt Eileen’s. And I know there’d be turkey and stuffing and sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top and yams and stuffed shells with ricotta cheese and other amazing, predictable things.

But a lot of people, whether every year or occasionally, find themselves in new places for Thanksgiving. The homes of different friends, or new in-laws, or potential in-laws, or potential in-laws that you very quickly realize are never going be in-laws.

In those situations, sure, it’s fun to “try new things,” like a turkey with a pork roast inside it filled with ghost pepper salsa-slathered stuffing. (Yes, I said stuffing, because dressing is something you do, and stuffing is something you do when you eat.)

But you know what’s also nice? In fact, essential? Having a couple things that you can count on no matter what. Food that is reliable and familiar. Turkey is one of those things. (Don’t mess with the turkey, people. People need their turkey.)

Stuffing is often one of those things. (I know, there’s many varieties, but also when you come right down to it, there’s just not that many varieties.)

Everything else is up for grabs. There are a million side dishes, and no two of them are alike. Salad has so many different dressings and kinds of leaf. (!%! you, kale, and your leaves that stick in my throat.) Pumpkin pie is consistent insofar as it is disgusting.

Cranberry sauce in a can is predictable. It doesn’t matter where you’re eating it, where you bought them, where the cranberries were grown or how they were treated. It’s delicious.

In the maelstrom of new trends, “family recipes” and I saw this on a TV show and had to try its, cranned cranberry sauce is the way station of Thanksgiving. The lighthouse to which you can look to be assured of finding shelter. Sometimes the only life raft bobbing amongst the ruins.

“Fresh” cranberry sauce people, Why do you want to take away people’s life raft? Why do you hate them so much?

THE ARC OF THE MORAL UNIVERSE IS LONG, BUT IT BENDS TOWARD CANNED CRANBERRY SAUCE

For those who are political or religious—always the fun ones at Thanksgiving; please, tell me more of your opinions about former presidents or Pope Francis—the origin of canned cranberry sauce is also worth considering. The cranberry harvesting season is only six weeks long, and you can’t grow them just anywhere either. So this guy Marcus Urann, who had traded being a lawyer for a Massachusetts cranberry bog (true story), decided he had to do something to extend the time period in which people can get cranberries.

“Plus, fresh cranberry sauce tastes disgusting. Cranberry sauce should not be chewy.” His words not mine.

Urann had already been pureeing damaged cranberries because it seemed wasteful to throw them out—Canned cranberries are better for the environment, people! And he learned that if you heat cranberries, they release this thing called pectin, which makes cranberries gel and makes children happy. And so he said, let’s do that to all our cranberries, throw it in an upside down can and sell it all year round.

(I don’t know if you ever noticed it but cranberry cans are wrongside up—the thin part is on the bottom not on the top. That creates an air pocket at the top of the can, which allows that sweet sweet log of edible joy to slide right out. Canned cranberries are technically ingenious!)

Urann co-founded Ocean Spray, by the way, which eventually became a collective of over 600 independent growers working together. Canned cranberries are anti-classist!

Fresh cranberry sauce people, the question is clear: Do you love the world and its people, or are you a fascist?

THIS IS MY MISSION OF MERCY

People don’t ask for much at Thanksgiving. A little human warmth. A turkey that isn’t dry and is not a container for other meat. And genuine artificial cranberry sauce that they can cut into completely unnatural discs and then scoop into our mouths.

You can make that happen. Help them, won’t you?

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I hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving!