Feeling Saucy

Miscellaneous holiday fun.
By Zach Hively

In these times, when controversy is sure to claim our clicks and likes, I choose to be no different than everyone else. So here’s my hot take to stir things up: Canned cranberry sauce is the best cranberry sauce.

I swear that the gelatinous ridges on a pristine serving make it taste better. It’s a lot like how a wine connoisseur will declare that a pre-war oaken cask produces superior, I don’t know … mouth splinters? When you’re an expert taster, your opinion matters, even when it is based in something other than reality.
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My cranberry sauce preferences have proven to be a powerful method for determining who to celebrate the season with. In fact, my girlfriend and I share a pro-can stance, which has goaded us into chancing our holiday dinners together. 

We better our odds of survival by not inviting anyone else to join in. So what if we are a proper pair of Ebenezers, only with a lot less money? We like the idea of sharing one single holiday all to ourselves and our own infallible food preferences.

That holiday is sometimes Arbor Day. But we’ll take it, because we align on most every Timeless Holiday Controversy there is.

Pumpkin pie over pecan pie. Butter over margarine. Star Wars over Star Trek (though why not both). I’m staunchly pro-Christmas, while she prefers no chile at all. (It’s a harmonious discord, because I eat her sides of both red and green.)

We even agree that—brace yourselves—turkey is not the best holiday-dinner bird. For starters, it feeds far more people than we want to invite. But mainly, we tend to forget to thaw it the recommended 3-6 weeks before overcooking it.

This year, however, we decided to do things differently. Little did I know just how differently.
You see, the other day, my girlfriend sent me a photo from the grocery store. The text showed a shelf tag with special member pricing on MISCELLANEOUS POULTRY.
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“Baby,” she wrote me. “Two, three, or four?”

Now I am not one to balk at a bit of creative reinterpretation of our most cherished national traditions. Last year, for instance, my Turkey Day dinner was mashed potatoes and duck, made by my generous Belgian friends trying to approximate American staples. I ate it out of a Tupperware, in the back seat of their car, next to their very polite and very intent retriever. And I loved it.

Miscellaneous poultry, though? It sounds so vague, so loosey-goosey. It’s not a particularly salivatory phrase. And it could quite literally mean any kind of edible bird. A French hen? A calling bird? A turducken? A street pigeon?

No matter which, it is an adventure I cannot deny myself.

Upon reflection, I have dined on relatively few poultries in my life. Hardly what anyone could call a miscellany. I’m missing out on a great many of the culinary wonders this world has to offer. So long as the girlfriend picks a miscellaneous poultry that is not an endangered species, or one of those pets trained to parrot bad words, I am game to try it.

Our random bird, whatever it may be, has already deepened our bond. This gets me thinking more globally. Adapting our holiday rituals and cultures to include one another might just bring us all closer together.
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So let’s be less controversial, for a change. May we all experience something new this season. May we all be willing to try something different, something miscellaneous, as a way of spreading love and cheer. Unless, of course, that something is fresh cranberry sauce.