You sit down at the table for Thanksgiving dinner. Your family is laughing and talking, all while passing around dishes full of yumminess.
You pile your plate high with turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, stuffing, green bean casserole, carrots, sweet potato casserole with the little marshmallows, and more rolls than probably necessary. You're starving despite having eaten half a dozen deviled eggs.
Your Great Aunt Karen goes to hand you the dish with the cranberry sauce, and you vehemently shake your head and make a face. "Ew, I don't want that on my plate!"
Ding Dong, You're Wrong!
Cranberry sauce, whether canned or made homemade, is great! Alone, it tastes wonderful. Did you know that cranberries are good for kidney health? They help prevent kidney stones. But together, with all of the other Thanksgiving classics, it is exquisite.
Think about it: your plate is full of starches and "thick" foods, most of which fall under the "savory" category. But then you add cranberry sauce into the mix, and it's light, sweet and tartiness cuts all of that and balances it out for a symphony of senses and tastes in your mouth.
Remember that scene from Ratatouille?
Unless you have an allergy to cranberries, why wouldn't you add it to your plate? Plus, it adds a pop of color to your ensemble. There's a reason why the universal color for Thanksgiving is brown. It's not just because turkeys are brown; it's because that's what your bland plate looks like when you don't add cranberry sauce. None of it even looks appetizing; it just looks like brown mush, but we know it tastes so so good. But cranberry sauce??? With that deep red tone that just looks so inviting?
Y'all are sleeping on something delicious. If you aren't going to eat it, then I'm just going to spend the next few days eating the leftover cranberry sauce.
