"Sassamanesh, Ibimi, Bitter Berry or Crane Berry" - A Cranberry by Any Other Name - Jo-Ann Roberts

While plenty of people eat turkey, mashed potatoes, and pie year-round, it seems like cranberry sauce almost exclusively exists only at Thanksgiving. Although the jiggly, gelatinous side dish probably wasn't eaten at the First Thanksgiving, they may have been an ingredient in some "puddings in the belly," as stuffings were called then.

But a little more than 50 years later (according to a 1672 account cited by The Washington Post), Americans and Native Americans had both started to enjoy cranberries. 

"Indians and English use it much, boyling them with Sugar for a Sauce to eat with their Meat."

For Eastern Indians, they were "sassamanesh".  The Pequots and Wampanoags of New England, and South Jersey Leni-Lanape tribes called them "ibimi" or bitter berry, while the Algonquins of Wisconsin dubbed the fruit "atoqua". But it was the early German and Dutch settlers who started calling it the "crane berry" because of the flower's resemblance to the head and bill of a crane.

It was the Native Americans who first took advantage of the cranberry's many natural properties. By mixing mashed cranberries with deer meat, they made a survival food called pemmican. They also believed in the medicinal value of the cranberry, using it in poultices to draw poison from arrow wounds. And the rich red juice of the cranberry was used as a natural dye for rugs, blankets, and clothing.

One of only three fruits native to North America, cranberries grow in the wild on long-running vines in sandy bogs and marshes. While they're primarily harvested in the Northeast, they also grow in Wisconsin, Michigan, Oregon, and Washington. 

But even with its many uses, cranberries weren't farmed on a large scale until the 1800s. At first, growers picked the berries by hand. They then revolutionized the dry harvesting technique with an idea called wet harvesting. By flooding the bog with water, the cranberry's buoyancy allows it to float to the surface, where they are collected.

     

DID YOU KNOW?

• In 1816, the first recorded yield of cranberries was grown and harvested in Dennis, Massachusetts.
• Americans consume some 400 million pounds of cranberries a year close to 80 million of those pounds during Thanksgiving week.
• Small pockets of air inside fresh cranberries cause them to bounce and float in water.
• If you strung together all the cranberries produced in North America, they'd stretch from Boston to Los Angels more than 565 times.
• Cranberries are picky when it comes to growing conditions. Because they are traditionally grown in natural wetlands, they need a lot of water. During the long, cold winter months, they also require a period of dormancy which rules out any southern region.

Each September, Cape Cod celebrates this most-beloved fruit at the Harwich Cranberry and Arts Festival. My mother-in-law lived in Harwich Port, not far from the festival. When are children were young, this was an annual tradition. Click Here

Happy Thanksgiving dear Friends,

        May you have a joyful day this Thanksgiving. May your holiday be full of blessings and love and brimming with an abundance of happiness. 

New Release

He made a promise to a dying friend.

She vowed never to love again.

"You can't continue living like this, Linnea. You've become a hermit.

Linnea Nyland heard the concern in her sister-in-law's voice. Still filled with grief and missing her husband a year after his unexpected passing, she didn't have the inclination to disagree with the statement. Though she dearly missed working her magic in the family bakery, she liked her life on the farm just the way it was...solitary.

Especially after Deputy Finn McBride came calling with his ridiculous proposal of marriage!

In a moment of panic, Finn made a heart pledge to Erik Nyland to take care of Linnea, to marry her. He'd bungled his first attempt, and he's not sure his heart can endure the vow he made knowing he'd been in love with her from the day he came to Holly Springs.

Giving it one last try, he challenges her to a holiday baking competition. If he wins, she must agree to let him court...if she wins, he'll leave her alone...forever.

Throw in a matchmaking landlady, a Norwegian Buhund dog, and a missing special ingredient, the lonely deputy prays for a Christmas miracle.

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It's Not All About the Turkey! - Side Dishes Served at the First Thanksgiving by Jo-Ann Roberts

 

Happy Thanksgiving! 

No holiday is so completely defined by its food as Thanksgiving. No matter what part of the country you're in, it's safe to say at least some of the foods listed in this blog will be served on your table today. Read on to discover the sometimes-surprising history behind your favorite holiday dishes.

While we don't know the exact menu of the first Plymouth (or Plimouth - an alternative spelling that got my husband in trouble during elementary school!) feast, there was evidence of wild turkeys. In addition, boiled duck with onions, geese, and even passenger pigeons were the more prominent and available fowls. And given their proximity to the ocean, oysters, lobsters, clams, and eel were likely on the menu.

However, stuffing was quite different from what we're used to. Plymouth colonists didn't have white flour or butter so traditional bread stuffing wouldn't have been possible. Instead, they used chestnuts, herbs, and chunks of onions to flavor the meat.

Like local fowl, cranberries were widely available in the area along with Concord grapes, blueberries, and pawpaws (its taste compares to pineapple, mango, or
banana). The cranberries grew in such abundance, they were mashed with lard and dried venison to create pemmican.

Potatoes weren't yet cultivated in Plymouth prior to the first Thanksgiving, so how did mashed potatoes become a holiday staple?  Thank Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey's Lady's Book. Her frequent appeals to officials and President Lincoln were compelling enough for him to declare Thanksgiving a national day of celebration in 1863. Her writings included recipes and descriptions of idealized Thanksgiving meals, which often featured--you guessed it--mashed potatoes!

Despite the lack of potatoes, it's likely a gravy of some sort accompanied the meats. Cooking meat in sauces dates back hundreds of years, and the word "gravy" was found in a cookbook from 1390.

To make the gravy, the remains of the roasted meat were put in a pot to make a broth. That broth would be thickened with grains to create a gravy to liven day-old meat...a precursor to today's leftovers!!!

Corn was a staple of the Native American diet and would have been nearly as plentiful then as it is today. But it was prepared either as a cornmeal bread or mashed or boiled into a thick porridge-like consistency. Sometimes it was sweetened with molasses.

  

Like cranberries, pumpkin pie does have ties to the original Thanksgiving but not in the way you might think. The Pilgrims knew how to make pie pastry but couldn't make it without flour. In addition, they were perplexed by pumpkins which were larger than the gourds they knew in England. Especially when they noticed the Native Americans using pumpkin as a dessert meal. They baked the pumpkin and squash in the ashes of a dying fire and sweetened with honey or maple syrup. It was likely that Sarah Josepha Hale was inspired by those stories when pumpkin pie appeared in her column!

 

As you gather with family, friends, loved ones, or neighbors today, remember it's not what's on the table but who's around the table that make us truly grateful for the blessings and bounty we have received.

My newest release, Noelle - Christmas Quilt Brides, goes live tomorrow, November 25th!!!!! Give yourself or your favorite reader an early Christmas present!

A widow reluctant to love again...

A deputy determined to win her heart...

Two years ago, Noelle Prentiss lost her husband to an outlaw's bullet. With two children to raise, a small farm to tend, and a job making quilts to sell at the mercantile, she's doing her best to keep her property and life intact...until a man claiming to be the new deputy rides into her life captivating her children with his dog, his smile, and his easy-going charm.

When Coleman West agrees to stop by the Widow Prentiss's home on his first day as a deputy in a small Kansas town, he has no way of knowing obeying the sheriff's order will change his life. Spurned by love years before, he became a lawman, dedicated to protect and serve. Yet, he has no idea the widow and her children would call to his heart in a way he never expected.

With Christmas looming, will the growing attraction between Noelle and the deputy reveal the gift of a second chance?

Or could a stranger from the deputy's past threaten the man who captured her heart?

 CLICK HERE