Thanksgiving 2022 After Action Report

Yesterday we had our goddaughter, her husband, and their 21 month old daughter as guests. My goddaughter is, in the old fashioned phrase, great with child. The baby is due any day now and she’s, well, enormous. It was a pleasant evening. I was the cook, as usual. I have cooked Thanksgiving dinners, as I reminisced yesterday evening, for just about 60 years. That’s a lot of Thanksgiving dinners. We had our usual menu: smoked turkey (I smoke it for about 9 hours), dressing (an adaptation of my wife’s family recipe, mashed potatoes, gravy, braised brussels sprouts and chestnuts, cranberry mold (my wife makes this), my tart and spicy cranberry sauce, and pumpkin chiffon pie (homemade crust), homemade dinner rolls. Just about everything is from scratch. The turkey, dinner rolls, and pie crust turned out the best ever. There’s something to that experience stuff after all.

There’s a quote which is appropriate. I haven’t been able to track down the original source but it goes something like this: “Since the beginning of time old ladies have always claimed that the strawberries were sweeter when they were girls”. There’s actually a kernel of truth in that. Things really aren’t the same as they used to be. Some things are better; some are worse; some are much worse.

You may not be aware of it but the stuff that’s sold as whipping cream in general is not whipping cream. Short version: if it says “Ultra-Pasteurized” on the container, it’s not whipping cream. When I began my Thanksgiving shopping I was shocked to learn that one of the ingredients on which I depended was no longer made. Dean’s Whipping Cream. That was actually whipping cream. If you look at the list of ingredients, there was only one: cream.

But Dean’s went out of business last year, it was acquired by Prairie Farms, and Prairie Farms does not produce real whipping cream. Like most products on the market they produce an ultra-pasteurized product made from cream with a gelling agent added, probably carrageenan (from seaweed). The gelling agent makes it appear to whip but it’s not actually whipping—it’s gelling.

So, if you’ve ever wondered why an old recipe doesn’t come out the way you expect it to, check you ingredients. The producer may have changed them on you. Or the ingredient may not be available at all.

In the case of whipping cream, after checking Jewel, Mariano’s (Kroger), Aldi, and several other grocery chains to no avail I checked Whole Foods and, sure enough, they carry a product, Kalona Super Natural Whipping Cream, that is actually whipping cream. Oddly, Jewel does carry a cream cheese product that is actually cream cheese. Yes, cream cheese ain’t what it used to be, either.