Our Annual Thanksgiving Cranberry Feud

Ah, the Thanksgiving when I discovered Ocean Spray cranberry jelly – it was a revelation that shook the very foundations of our family dinner table traditions. You see, Thanksgiving in our household was a serious affair, and cranberries held a place of honor right alongside the turkey.

My father, the self-proclaimed gardening maestro and culinary wizard, was the mastermind behind our annual cranberry and orange dish with walnuts. It was like a fruity symphony of flavors, and even as a young child, it looked suspiciously like dessert to me. But hey, who was I to argue? If there’s one day when you can load up your plate with dessert-like side dishes, it’s Thanksgiving!

Then, when I was five years old, my sister – who is old enough to be my mother, but we won’t dwell on that – managed to persuade our parents to let her take the reins and host Thanksgiving dinner at her new home with her husband Dale. My dad, ever the cranberry aficionado, brought his cranberry orange masterpiece and his famous cornbread dressing. Little did we know that this Thanksgiving would introduce a wild card into our cranberry equation – Ocean Spray cranberry jelly.

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In addition to the usual suspects like turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, fresh bread, and a dessert lineup that could give a pastry chef an inferiority complex, my sister proudly plopped a can of Ocean Spray cranberry jelly onto the table. To say that my father was taken aback would be an understatement. The man who had passionately grown his own cranberries was now faced with the arch-nemesis of his culinary world – canned cranberry jelly.

With the innocence and candor only a five-year-old can muster, I declared that I liked the jelly better than the orange-cranberry mixture. The table fell silent, as if I’d just committed a gastronomic coup d’état. My parents exchanged incredulous glances, and my sister sported a triumphant grin. Dale, a Nebraska farm boy, jumped to my defense, proudly proclaiming his allegiance to the canned jelly. You could practically hear the record scratch.

From that moment on, our Thanksgiving dinners became battlegrounds in the cranberry wars. Both cranberry dishes secured their positions on the table, and each year, the family would engage in a heated but good-natured debate about which was superior. My dad, the cranberry purist, couldn’t quite fathom how anyone could prefer the canned stuff. He’d tease Dale about his questionable cranberry loyalties, and Dale would retaliate with jokes about my dad’s cranberry vines.

Life took me on a journey from my childhood in Sacramento to Plymouth, Massachusetts, where I now reside, surrounded by cranberry bogs and family farms. It’s like I was destined to be in cranberry country. So, when our executive editor suggested we create a Garden Guide on Cranberries, I was all in. If you haven’t read it yet, you’ll discover that the history of cranberries is as fascinating as the annual cranberry debates at our Thanksgiving table. And, of course, we’ve included some fantastic cranberry recipes that might just make their way onto your Thanksgiving menu.

As the years roll on, all of us here at Food Gardening Network wish you the happiest of Thanksgiving holidays. We hope our guides and recipes help make this Thanksgiving the best one yet for you and your family. And if you have your own cranberry stories to share, please do – because nothing brings a family together like a good old-fashioned cranberry feud!

Happy gardening, and happy eating!