A Civilized Thanksgiving

I hope the historical pun here escapes no one. Generations later, and this day was still chaos. Delicious, but chaos. It involved my mom frantically preparing her kitchen… not for the meal, not to cook, not to have guests… but for her mother, who was in charge in any kitchen and would count your spoons to see if you had lost any since last year. With my brothers and I around, my mom was doomed, there was always a lost spoon. 

From my perspective, it was honestly comical- straight out of a 90’s sitcom. I had seen the episode a thousand times. (Maybe it was only funny because I could walk away.) Yet, I knew it bristled my mom. We always got to a place where we could laugh about it, which was typically halfway through dinner. The trick to my mom’s Thanksgiving meals? Sneak as much booze into the food as possible. I know that the alcohol cooks off, but I still joke that this tendency is a trauma response to the initial stress of the day. One of her best boozy creations that has never missed a Thanksgiving? Her cranberry sauce.

Before diving into this recipe, I want to pump my mom up here. There were years where none of her kids ate this sauce. We did not get it, we rolled our eyes, we thought it was gross. Mind you, we also never tried it. But she made it anyway, simply because she loved it, she knew it was good and that one day, we would know it too. I felt it only right on our first Civilized Thanksgiving together, that I share one of those moments, where your mom is quietly and gracefully sure of herself, where, as impossible as it had seemed for so long, she was right. 

So, grab a spoon if you haven’t lost them all, and give this simple delicacy a try!