Let's talk about thanksgiving
At least there's a recipe this time!
I actually have nothing to say (can u believe it???) but I have a recipe that I really must share.
I am ambivalent at best about thanksgiving, and for the last four years have felt active animosity towards it, which may never go away. Not that anybody prepared me in any way for having my father die a shocking, horrible death, but if they had I don’t know if they’d have mentioned this part: when your dad dies after a holiday weekend, that holiday is shit forever.
I have so many different triggers around thanksgiving. The Monday after thanksgiving? Well, that’s when he died. But it was also the 28th of November. Somehow, both of those are held, balanced, as being equally shitty. I guess trauma doesn’t really give a shit about “anniversaries” in the linear sense. Thanksgiving, well that was when I was visiting my most beloved friends in Los Angeles, instead of seeing my dad, or speaking to my dad, I was having a great weekend with a different family altogether.
The time after he was killed blends all together. Two weeks of bereavement from work, and then I came back on a Monday (can you believe it?) and the worst part (other than being at work and my dad being dead) was that I had to process the invoices that I had been working on when I got the call. Nobody had dealt with those while I was gone, the work that I was in the middle of was still there, waiting for me. It taunted me saying “the last time you had to deal with this you thought your dad was alive, and you were wrong.”
So, I hate thanksgiving. For the last few years I have celebrated it with my vegan friend who doesn’t visit family, but 1. pandemic, and 2. she lives in Portland now, so we super can’t eat mashed potatoes with her. (These are the mashed potatoes she’d always bring, they’re really very very good.) This year, I personally do not regret not being able to celebrate That Holiday, but Noah does, so we are Celebrating Thanksgiving. This Saturday is my dad’s yahrzeit (spellcheck asks “do you mean Yahtzee?” which is antisemetic imo), so the theme of this week is Getting Through It. I will, and so will you
Well, okay, I guess I did have something to say. I lied! Anyway, I don’t like thanksgiving, like, at all, but I do like this recipe for cranberry sauce a lot. This is from Brice’s mom, Janet. It whips ass.
Cranberry salad
From Janet, Brice’s mom
For large group - 9x13 pan
2 small boxes of cherry jello or 1 large box
1 cup hot water
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups cranberries (ground)
2 cups crushed pineapple
1 cup of pecans (ground)
2 oranges (peel & all) ground up
You need a food processor for this one, this is the midwest’s finest baybeee.
Put the cranberries in the food processor. Grind em up. Put in a mixing bowl.
Drain the crushed pineapple, once it is drained, add it to the mixing bowl.
Pecans, you know they go in the food processor, grind em, mixing bowl.
Yes, the same with the organges. You’re getting the hang of this now.
Mig up all the ground stuff.
Mix the jello, sugar, and water separately before pouring into the chopped things.
Also its basically one bag of ocean spray cranberries and one 14oz can pineapple.
Chill and serve. Salad will be firm. Can chill in a flat dish for cutting.
This year we are going to halve this, because while it is VERY good, I do not need a 9x13 of cranberry salad.
Also, I expect that it can easily be made vegan if you have access to vegan jello—this may be in the kosher/halal section of your grocery, or the ~health~ section. It was in neither section of the store by us, but I might give whole foods a shot if I am feeling brave.