Why We Eat Canned Cranberry Sauce

In the previous century, in the Rural South where I was reared, canned cranberry sauce was eaten at Christmas and Thanksgiving. We never had fresh cranberries. I was grown before I knew people who ate fresh cranberries.

--USDA cranberry photo

I can't remember where I read about cranberry sauce and its significance at our holidays. Our meals were plentiful. Bounteous feasts were served on holidays. Cooking took place over a number of days prior: hams were baked, both cured and fresh pork; and special cakes and pies. Turkeys were not as popular as hens for serving with dressing, not stuffing. We grew our own corn that was taken to mill, ground into meal, and made into cornbread for dressing. We grew our own eggs, green beans, sweet potatoes, onions and Irish potatoes. My grandmother even grew the celery that went into her dressing.

So what is the significance of canned cranberry sauce? It was a sign that we not only had a feast, but we could afford to buy canned goods that did not grow in our area. Not only cranberries graced our table, but stuffed olives as well. We could grow pimento peppers, but olives were not in our orchards, nor cranberries in our swamps.

I enjoy fresh cranberries at somebody else's table, but I always serve canned -- the whole berry kind. We eat it year 'round with chicken. Mama always bought jellied cranberry sauce and served it in a little oblong glass dish that was reserved for such a special holiday treat.

Here's a link to Ocean Spray's tutorial for a perfect Cranberry Log (how to get jellied cranberry sauce out of the can in one piece).






-- table photos are my own, taken at dinners I attended in 2005 and 2006.

The Bird Tangle Is Gone!

When nandinas grew to 7 feet tall, ancient spireas grew even taller, wisteria and catbrier (Smilax) covered the whole thing. Rather than deal with it, I called it 'The Bird Tangle' and it did have a few birds, mostly sitting in the dogwood tree above.


For a brief period each March, the Bird Tangle had a claim to fame: white wisteria hung over nandinas. Eventually catbrier covered everything.
This is the same view as in my recent post on Dogwood, where everybody was kind enough to ignore the 'Bird Tangle' in front of the dogwood in bloom:


Today it disappeared. The nandinas and spirea were cut down forever. We dug the roots of those, wisteria roots and huge catbrier tubers. It opened the view, looking toward the road and took away a screen behind which intruders could hide. All that is left is the ancient dogwood tree that wisteria and smilax continuously tried to climb.

Once upon a time, MIL tried to disguise the gas tank with Nandina and Spirea. The Propane tank was long ago moved to the back out of sight, where it should have been all the time. The bird tangle was a remanant of her efforts to disguise everything, usually futile. The only thing left of the shrubs that were intended to hide the cattle pen by planting them as closely as possible to the building is a single variegated euonymous that I kept for sentiment in the yellow rose bed. I don't hide anything, I plant in lines of sight so there's something to look at before you reach the offending structure. There's nothing to the south beyond the newly opened site except a grove of pecan trees in a former cattle pen, not unattractive in my view.

I haven't talked to anybody about it yet, but I'm hopeful of putting in a white crape myrtle in the line of sight where an old catalpa stump stands behind the fence.

Oh! Don't worry about the birds. They have plenty of other tangles all around with tastier food than this one provided.

Dogwood is a tree; Dagwood is a Sandwich?

According to Vedel and Lange, the word dogwood comes from dagwood, from the use of the slender stems of very hard wood for making daggers or skewers.
Cornus florida is our eastern white-flowering native Dogwood tree. Cornus florida grows wild, at woods' edge and in high shade.


Recent pics of dogwood seeds.

The red seeds are easily sprouted, either by giving a period of chill before planting, or my informal method, which is to push a fresh seed into the ground where I wish it to grow and give it a couple of years. Birds plant many dogwoods, dropping the seed which has passed through the bird's digestive system to prepare it to germinate quickly onto the ground beside a fence or under a tall tree. There are many online sources which give detailed instructions for cold stratification and sprouting.


Dogwoods bloom with Azaleas in late March, early April here. These dogwoods are from seeds.

The Dogwood (Cornus florida) and its inflorescence are the state tree and the state flower for the U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia. Dogwood is also the state tree of Missouri and the state flower of North Carolina.


This is one of two dogwoods that my MIL planted 50 years ago.

Horticulturists recommend buying dogwood trees rather than planting seeds because of fungal diseases to which dogwoods are prone. If you want pink or red dogwoods, buy a grafted tree.

Legend of the Crucifixion:
" Because of your regret and pity for My suffering, never again shall the dogwood tree grow large enough to be used as a cross. It will be slender and bent and twisted and its blossoms shall be in the form of a cross--two long and two short petals. In the center of the outer edge of each petal there shall be nail prints, brown with the stain of a rusty nail and stained with blood, and in the center of the flower will be a crown of thorns, and all who see it will remember."

A seedling dogwood that I moved from beside the pumphouse.


Late note:
I stand corrected.
Red twig Dogwood is Cornus stolonifera (sometimes listed as C. sericea). Red osier dogwood is native to most of northern and western North America.


Cornus mas is Cornelian Cherry, yellow flowering dogwood.

Cornus alba is the Tatarian dogwood with native habitat from Siberia and Manchuria to North Korea.
C. sanguinea, bloodtwig dogwood is native to Europe.

Thanks, Helen, for calling my attention to my error.