Holiday Tables

nut cups and cranberry-orange bread

Nov 27, 2024

November 27

Hello and happy Thanksgiving,

I have been relieved of all cooking responsibilities this Thanksgiving and am looking forward to the respite. In particular, I will not miss the crowded grocery store or figuring out how to fit everything into the fridge. We are celebrating with my son, daughter-in-law, and baby grandson in lower Manhattan and have been informed that the turkey and all the fixings have been ordered and will arrive at the door hot and ready to serve. I am certain I offered to bake a pie, but my son seems to have forgotten that and only reminded us that his dad should bring his West Virginia Refrigerator Rolls. (The story behind the rolls and the recipe can be found here.)

Family traditions during the holidays can be fun to follow, but it is also nice to change things up. My mother never let a holiday go by without a floral centerpiece and salt cellars from her collection at each person’s place filled with nuts and small mints. A salt cellar is just another name for a dish that holds salt. In ancient Roman times, the head of the household was given a communal silver salt cellar with a tiny spoon to pass around the table. Salt was once an expensive luxury, and important guests were seated near the salt. Also, in the Middle Ages, the head of the house oversaw a bowl called the master salt passed around with a tiny spoon. By the 18th and 19th centuries, individual salt cellars like my mom collected replaced the communal bowl. They were often still silver but with a glass lining to prevent the salt from corroding the silver. My mom’s are cut or pressed glass. The salt shaker was invented in 1858 by John Mason, who also came up with the Mason jar. By the middle of the 20th century, salt cellars were out of fashion, but they had found another purpose in our house.

This is just a fraction of my mom’s collection. The blue ones belonged to my mother’s mother, and now my cousin Angie and I each own six.

They are too tiny to decipher in this photo, but this picture taken on our road a couple of weeks ago shows a field of pumpkins far away, too late for the harvest. I have often seen this in early November and have wondered why the pumpkins have been left to go to waste. This year, a local farmer educated me that the pumpkins make excellent fertilizer and are plowed into the ground to help with next year’s corn harvest. We will be having pumpkin pie tomorrow, just not mine! However, I will bring cranberry bread since no one wants leftover turkey the next morning for breakfast. This bread is my favorite after some trial and error and a combination of more than one recipe. In one experiment I tried cooking the cranberries in sugar before assembling the bread. I even added pomegranate arils, thinking they might add color and a pleasant crunch, but neither effort at recipe tinkering was successful. This bread is moist and has a slightly crusty layer on top. The cardamom and a generous tablespoon of grated orange zest are key.

Cranberry-Orange Bread

Ingredients

2 c. unbleached flour

2/3 c.sugar

1 /1/2 t. baking powder

1/2 t. salt

1/2 t. baking soda

1/2 t. cardamom

2 c. coarsely chopped cranberries (I pulsed them in the food processor.)

1/2 c. chopped walnuts

1 T. grated orange peel

1 beaten egg

4 T. Softened butter

Directions

Whisk together dry ingredients. Stir in cranberries, nuts, and grated orange peel. Combine egg, orange juice, vanilla, and butter in a separate bowl. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until just moistened. Bake in a greased loaf pan at 350 degrees for about one hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool before removing from the pan.