From my first memories of Thanksgiving and Christmas, through my 12th year, Mama always made turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, and pumpkin pies for both holidays. (after that, we moved to Latin America.) There is nothing as wonderful as Mama's dressing that she stuffed into the turkey. It absorbed all that wonderful turkey juice and flavor...oh my!
Back in the 1960s, cranberry sauce came in a can.. Period.. I do not remember ever seeing a bag of cranberries until I was in my 20s and back here in the States. And in the '60s, canned cranberry sauce was either jellied or whole cranberries. It was pretty simple for me to decided that the jellied sauce was wonderful and the whole berry sauce was "yucky"! And...being me...I stood by my decision for years. I did not like whole cranberry sauce. No matter that Mama made it from scratch. No matter that there were all sorts of variations of the recipe running around. I like jellied cranberry sauce!
Then, one fateful Thanksgiving Day, about 4 years ago, I failed to remember to bring the jellied cranberry sauce to dinner! And there was Mom's wonderful dressing needing to be eaten. I had no choice but to have some of her homemade whole-berry sauce with it...and to my amazement...I LOVED it! LOL...go figure!
That Christmas, I made sure I was at her house when she made her cranberry sauce...more amazement as I saw how very simple it is to make. The directions are on the bag of berries. You follow them. The berries take care of the rest, as they sauce up so beautifully after cooing down. Now I make sure we always have a few jars in the freezer. It goes so well with not only turkey, but also roasted chicken and pork. I highly recommend it! LOLOLOL!
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