I was very young when I first discovered my love affair with cranberries.  You would have to journey back with me to the early 1950’s to understand how it all started.  As the holidays were approaching the cranberry farmers in our neighboring Wisconsin were knee deep in the cranberry bogs harvesting the cranberry crop.

As Thanksgiving approached the store shelves were piled high with transparent bags of cranberries.  Each fall my Mother faithfully purchased a bag and brought it home to officially start the holiday season.  I’m not sure if canned cranberries were available then……they might not have been invented yet.  If they were available I’m sure they would have cost more so my Mom’s limited budget made the bagged variety much more appealing.

Once the bag arrived in our kitchen we siblings had a very important job.  The cranberries were poured onto a large flat rectangular pan.  A round pizza pan would have worked well but remember pizza hadn’t been discovered yet so who needed a round pan in those days?  Our job was to pick out the shriveled, discolored and unhealthy looking cranberries and throw them.  Also an occasional stem had to be removed from the fruit.  There was nothing more annoying then having a cranberry stem  wedged between a couple of molars right in the middle of a delicious Thanksgiving dinner.

The cranberries that passed that test were then drowned in sugar and brought to a boil on the stove.  That was my Mom’s task so I’m not sure how that all went but the end result was the most delicious sweet, yet a little tart, cranberry sauce.  It went into the refrigerator and cooled.

Mashed potatoes, smothered in gravy, turkey and cranberries were all I needed to make my holiday perfect.  Of course there was always room for a small wedge of pumpkin pie topped in cool whip. 🙂

So that was my childhood, Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas dinners and New Years dinners all opportunities to stuff myself with mashed potatoes, gravy, turkey and, yes, cranberries.

Then I got married.  I soon found out that their family had not heard about the tasty cranberry fruit or at least never made it a part of a holiday meal.  They were fond of things like sauerkraut.  They thought beer was one of the food groups!

I first became aware of the looming cranberry crisis during our first Christmas when I told my wife Kathie about my love of cranberries.  My lovely bride went to the store immediately and purchased a bag of cranberries.  I was so proud of her.  Later that day I went into the kitchen and there she stood heating her first kettle of cranberries.  I asked her if there were many spoiled berries assuming she had gone through the same process I and my siblings were assigned to do those many years ago.  She looked at me puzzled and replied, “What spoiled berries?”   That’s when I realized she didn’t know about our family ritual of preparing the perfect cranberry sauce.

Her cranberry sauce tasted wonderful even though it included a few berries that would have not met my standards of excellence.  So after that we ‘chucked’ the ritual of cranberry examination and just dumped the whole bag into the pan, added sugar and boiled.  That’s when I first realized my perfectionistic traits probably originated from my Mom’s DNA.

Over the years we spent many happy holiday gatherings with family.  My mother-in-law was very faithful in having a can of cranberries ready to serve.  But some years she would forget to open them and serve them.  I was too polite to say, “Please pass the cranberries!”  So those meals were not quite as enjoyable. However, after each meal I was always miserably stuffed cranberries or no cranberries.

The ‘love of cranberries’ gene has not been passed on to any of my offspring.  Not one of my children longs for cranberries with mashed potatoes, gravy and turkey.  I’ve given up on them so now I’m looking for cranberry lovers among my eight grandchildren.  The other day I convinced my granddaughter Caylin to try a tiny taste.  After the taste test the look on her face leads me to believe the cranberry gene is not a part of her genetic makeup either. 🙁

Now we are usually well stocked with canned cranberries so I can enjoy them whenever I have chicken or turkey.  Even if it’s the Fourth of July cranberries are a possibility.  However hotdogs and cranberries are not a food combination that I long for.

It is a lonely life being the only cranberry lover in a family.  However, if any of you readers have the same love for cranberries feel free to give me a call and we can meet and enjoy a can of cranberries together! 🙂  In fact just writing this blog has given me the desire to have some cranberries.  Oh my gosh, look at the time.  It’s noon.  I think I’ll find the can opener and you know what I’m going to have for lunch. 🙂

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Until next time.