The Real Measure of Thanksgiving
No, not about doing good for those less fortunate, or being grateful for the food you're gorging yourself on, etc., etc. The real measure is how you consume your cranberries.
Everyone knows the sine qua non is the Jell-O-like stuff that comes in a can. You splort it out onto a plate and slice it up, but if you can't see the ridges in the side from the shape of the can, it's not the real deal. Anything else is just pretense.
Here is proof: Every year NPR's Susan Stamberg gives her family recipe for cranberry sauce. It has actual cranberries in it, and it sounds pretty plausible until you get to her secret, special ingredient. This is the dead giveaway that this is nothing more than a prank on the people who listen to NPR because they think it makes them seem more high-toned than if they listened to top-40 or WFAN like they really want to. Stamberg's recipe contains horseradish. Now, come on. If you are not laughing yourself silly at that point in the recipe, the joke is clearly on you.
There are other, less extreme recipes that contain more subtle combinations of ingredients, but those are just for show. You see the more complex versions served in restaurants that are trying to garner attention or justify their prices with quirky methods ("All our food is prepared in a medieval firepit that was discovered in Uzbekistan in 1912 and disassembled and carried over by specially bred llamas") and impossible reservations ("We only serve one person per evening so the chef can give that individual meal his undivided attention; our next available seating is in 2218") rather than really good food. You find the easier versions in the homes of people who buy things all covered with designer names and logos to show their good taste (just so you know: slapping a "designer" logo on something is not the same as good design), and read Gawker.com religiously to find out what they should be fascinated by. (A lot of the people mentioned on Gawker are made up--just more pranks on the unwitting. Most people know this. Less well known is that several of the political figures mentioned on Daily Kos are made up, too, for similar reason.)
The real upper crust--the kind of people who could easily have their cranberries grown in private high-moisture cranberry-growing environments ("bog" is such an unattractive word) and their sugar genetically engineered to their exact palate sensitivity for sweetness on their personal islands--prefer the stuff that's shaped like a can. They may have it served on a plate that cost more than your house, brought to the table by a servant who was retained before birth, having been interviewed and hired in utero and trained from infancy in a private academy on a secret space station to insulate them from bad influences like self-determination and labor laws, and eaten with turkey that has been dusted in uranium (gold is so gauche!) but when it comes to the cranberries, the super-rich are eating the same shaped-like-a-can stuff as the trailer park family.
Because it's good. And good is the ultimately equalizer. We can all be grateful for that.
Everyone knows the sine qua non is the Jell-O-like stuff that comes in a can. You splort it out onto a plate and slice it up, but if you can't see the ridges in the side from the shape of the can, it's not the real deal. Anything else is just pretense.
Here is proof: Every year NPR's Susan Stamberg gives her family recipe for cranberry sauce. It has actual cranberries in it, and it sounds pretty plausible until you get to her secret, special ingredient. This is the dead giveaway that this is nothing more than a prank on the people who listen to NPR because they think it makes them seem more high-toned than if they listened to top-40 or WFAN like they really want to. Stamberg's recipe contains horseradish. Now, come on. If you are not laughing yourself silly at that point in the recipe, the joke is clearly on you.
There are other, less extreme recipes that contain more subtle combinations of ingredients, but those are just for show. You see the more complex versions served in restaurants that are trying to garner attention or justify their prices with quirky methods ("All our food is prepared in a medieval firepit that was discovered in Uzbekistan in 1912 and disassembled and carried over by specially bred llamas") and impossible reservations ("We only serve one person per evening so the chef can give that individual meal his undivided attention; our next available seating is in 2218") rather than really good food. You find the easier versions in the homes of people who buy things all covered with designer names and logos to show their good taste (just so you know: slapping a "designer" logo on something is not the same as good design), and read Gawker.com religiously to find out what they should be fascinated by. (A lot of the people mentioned on Gawker are made up--just more pranks on the unwitting. Most people know this. Less well known is that several of the political figures mentioned on Daily Kos are made up, too, for similar reason.)
The real upper crust--the kind of people who could easily have their cranberries grown in private high-moisture cranberry-growing environments ("bog" is such an unattractive word) and their sugar genetically engineered to their exact palate sensitivity for sweetness on their personal islands--prefer the stuff that's shaped like a can. They may have it served on a plate that cost more than your house, brought to the table by a servant who was retained before birth, having been interviewed and hired in utero and trained from infancy in a private academy on a secret space station to insulate them from bad influences like self-determination and labor laws, and eaten with turkey that has been dusted in uranium (gold is so gauche!) but when it comes to the cranberries, the super-rich are eating the same shaped-like-a-can stuff as the trailer park family.
Because it's good. And good is the ultimately equalizer. We can all be grateful for that.
posted by Maines at 2:13 PM
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