Berry, berry, quite contrary

I don’t care what anyone says. Canned cranberry jelly is way better than the real stuff.

It’s got a consistency not found in nature, mostly because it’s not found in nature. It retains its can shape with an eerie fidelity, and when wild animals eat it, they get acid indigestion and have the squeaks for a week. Somehow, this all ends up in the positive column for this annual holiday staple, despite the fact that its acidity could liquify lead ball bearings.

If you’re one of the Thanksgiving revelers who slaved over their time-honored cranberry sauce recipe, then fear not. The real stuff is good, too. Really the only crime would be to pass a Thanksgiving meal without touching a teaspoon of this wonderful bounty; that would be like celebrating Christmas without a tree, or Independence Day without a hangover.

Somehow, though, the faceless corporate cranberry people got it right. I realize not everyone shares this view – most, in fact, would prefer ma’s home cookin’ to the jiggly, off-the-shelf fare found in supermarkets. Of course, most people prefer Sprite to Sierra Mist, and these unfortunate souls are insane.

Generally, homemade food is preferable. Better to eat an imperfect cake that’s been prepared lovingly than to rot your teeth on a generic, factory-fashioned concoction. Better still to sink your teeth into a burger that’s been cooked on your friend’s grill than the flaccid, gutless patties offered at countless fast food chains with cartoon mascots. There’s something about the home touch – the fresh ingredients, the time and effort – that makes food better. Usually.

But this isn’t always the case. As far back as I can remember, each of my Thanksgiving meals has been conjured from raw materials, whipped into shape by a host who didn’t mind a little elbow grease. I’ve been lucky that way. The perfectly imperfect mashed potatoes have all been moderately lumpy, the squash has been fresh, and the birds have been so recently dead you half expect a browned wing to slap your fork away, as if to say, “Watch it, jerk! That hurts!”

Then you look at the cranberry jelly and imagine you can still make out the serial number stamped onto the bottom. How the canned stuff became a family tradition is a mystery; I picture a sweating Lagasse in early 20th century Lewiston, flour and turkey guts caked high on her forearms, crying with relief when the first canned cranberry made its way into her hands. “At last!” she sobbed. “My life has been made easier by science!”

Over time, I got so used to the fake jelly that when I first tried the real stuff, I thought someone was playing a sick, cruel prank. Where was the weird residual coating on my palate? Where was the perfect symmetry, the subtle undulations on the side of each cookie-cutter slice, ribbed for my pleasure? Blasphemy!

Ordinarily I’d side with the little guy over the large company. Not that I'm inherently anti-corporation by nature; many are so evil they make Darth Vader look like an asexual dog groomer, but that's a generalization, and there are a few that break the mold. Rather, it's a David and Goliath kind of thing. When the two sides of a fight seem mismatched, it's a natural human impulse to root for the underdog, the little guy. In most spheres of life, this is what feels more comfortable. More just.

Not so when it comes to cranberries. Using the ever-trustworthy (cough) Internet as a resource, the history of the canned version is pretty easily explained. Originally, see, cranberries were “dry harvested,” meaning a hoard of sticky-fingered workers would scour the fields during dry weather and pick the berries from their vines, which is how fresh cranberries – and most fruits – are still made commercially available today. Except for pineapples, of course, which are delivered to supermarkets by demons fresh from the deep, dark depths of hell.

At some point, the companies growing the berries commercially started to “wet harvest” them. That sounds like a unit in a middle school sex education class, but wet harvesting is basically just a machine skimming loose cranberries from the surface of a flooded bog. You get a lot more bounty with a lot fewer people that way, but you also get a lot of crummy cranberries mixed in with the good ones. As early as 1912, companies like Ocean Spray figured out what to do with those leftover cranberries: can them, let them naturally congeal, and then sell them as mouse pads. When they realized the computer mouse hadn't been invented yet, they figured, “Aw, heck. Let people eat 'em. Can't be any worse than a fruitcake.”

So with a little ingenuity, the packaged product took its proud place beside Aunt Doris' homemade apricot-and-lizard-sphincter pie. It's a bit incongruous, this impeccably cylindrical treat, but Thanksgiving really wouldn't be the same without it. Which is what the holiday is all about, really. The fact that the banana bread and green bean casserole have all been made from scratch isn't the point; it's the fact that the same cherished foods grace our plates year after year. Repetition is what makes a tradition a tradition. If you ate nothing but day-old pizza and Twizzlers each Thanksgiving for 20 years, then doggone it, the holiday just wouldn't be the same without it. Someone would hand you a plate of fresh turkey and applesauce and you'd recoil in horror, whipping out your cell phone to order something that comes with blood-thick dipping sauce.

We enjoy Thanksgiving every year because it's familiar and comfortable. Canned cranberry jelly plays into that nicely, so bring it on. Mom's blueberry pie, cousin Sandy's chocolate pudding and Ocean Spray's congealed fruit.

Sounds about right to me.