Good Press

I thought I broke the cranberry sauce. When cooking, I don't usually work from memory or make things up as I go along. And certainly not when there is a holiday meal at stake. I wanted to make the cranberry sauce today and I couldn't find the magazine with the idea I had read. So I risked spoiling the sauce and struck out on my own, using the recipe on the bag of cranberries as a guide. To the bag of Ocean Spray cranberries, I added 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of water, per the directions. But then I wanted to add 2 cups of frozen mixed berries I had. And I felt like the sauce needed orange juice and cinnamon. So in went 1/2 cup OJ and 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon. I set it to boiling on the stove. It looked like a lot of really runny liquid. I worried for many minutes and tried to calm my fears with the mantra "It'll cook down. It'll cook down." It cooked down. When I poured it out into a bowl to cool, my husband tasted it and pronounced it good. Whew! So it is ch...

This year we are sharing Thanksgiving dinner with at least two others families at our church, as I mentioned in an earlier post. I'm roasting two donated turkeys and bringing the dressing, four blueberry pies and many gallons of iced tea, plus a special touch I'll dedicate the next post to. Another church member gave me the blueberries that he had picked and frozen this summer. Here are the recipes and photos. Traditional Bread Stuffing With Herbs (forefront of photo) on last year's Thanksgiving buffet TRADITIONAL BREAD STUFFING WITH HERBS 1/2 cup margarine or butter (1 stick) 5 large celery stalks, chopped 1 large onion, chopped 1 teaspoon dried thyme 3/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon pepper 1/2 teaspoon dried sage 1 14 1/2-ounce can chicken broth 2 16-ounce loaves sliced firm white bread, lightly toasted and cut into 1/2-inch cubes 1/2 cup loosely packed fresh parsley leaves, chopped Preheat oven to 325. In 12-inch skillet, melt margarine or butter over medium heat. Add cele...

Last year, I posted an opinion piece that said food writers hate Thanksgiving because they are pressured to develop new recipes that will largely be ignored. Few consumers break with tradition when the day comes to break the wishbone. They will make green bean casserole and marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes despite all the side-dish variations and innovations presented in magazines and newspapers. My experience has also been that people want Thanksgiving to taste a certain way -- the recipes prepared the way they remember their mothers or grandmothers making them. A woman at church complained last week that her aunt wants to put lemon pepper on the turkey this year because she saw Martha Stewart do it. The changes I have implemented in my holiday meals are, in my opinion, not that radical, but I have met resistance of varying intensities. My mother-in-law distrusts my cooking because, in part, one Thanksgiving I was assigned to bring the green beans . Instead of boiling them within an ...