Reflection by Renee Beauregard Lute

Lord, you were favorable to your land;
you restored the fortunes of Jacob.
You forgave the iniquity of your people;
you pardoned all their sin.

Psalm 85:1-2, NRSV

This Thanksgiving, I'm using a new recipe for frozen cranberry salad. The thing about cranberries is that they are almost inedible. They are bitter and terrible, and an awful hassle to dice. I use them because I'm from Massachusetts, and because I drove by cranberry bogs on my way to school. It's an identity thing, I'm sure. I'm a New Englander who lives in (and loves) the Pacific Northwest, but what if there were no cranberries on my Thanksgiving table? I would be unmoored.

The recipe asks me to soak my diced cranberries in sugar for at least eight hours. After the eight hours, they almost taste like a food someone would eat. Then I whip cream, and stir in marshmallows and pineapple. Freeze everything, and it's lovely. My mom describes it as a holiday ambrosia salad.

But I wonder about the origins of the cranberry. I wonder about the first person who tried it and thought, “Well, this is nasty and awful. But maybe we can add something to make it taste good. Maybe there's something we can do, here.” That person would not have been me. I'd have trash canned them and stuck with cherries and raspberries forever afterward. But someone didn't. Someone covered them in sugar and forgave their bitterness, and they've had a life on holiday tables ever since. What a lovely thought.