In the name of making all non-foodies feel good about themselves, this person takes all that is good and non-anxiety-inducing--Where's my heritage turkey?!--and gussies it up with hard-to-find ingredients and protestations of simplicity.

Pumpkin seed oil, my ass.

I agree. I'm supposed to serve edamame to my in-laws and parents? They would not be happy.

Why would you even consider canned cranberry sauce in the first place?

Go to the grocery store. Pick up a bag of fresh cranberries. Read the label on the back. You will find a twit-proof recipe for sauce that takes less than 20 minutes to make. If you want to impress everyone, add a little bit of Grand Marnier and some lemon peel.

Do it a day ahead of time. Put it in the fridge.

That's not the point of my post, is it?

Funny, I thought it was the title.

On the heritage turkey question, they do taste better. Repeat, "they do taste better". They are easy to find and can be ordered in advance from most grocery stores. Yes, they are more expensive, but food is not something you should skimp on, anyway.

Even better, use the twit-proof recipe on the cranberry bag, but use BRANDY instead of water. The relatives love it (especially the drinkers).

Hmmm. Sounds promising. This year, we're doing a cranberry chutney with slivers of almond and Granny Smith apple....there's Calvados involved. Sounds yummy!

How did you answer the question about buying half cans of crabnberry sauce?

The post is about foodies making non-foodies feel rotten while pretending to understand.

Happy Thanksgiving.

You know, there's no such creature as a "foodie". There are only cooks that are learning and cooks that are not. It honest to goodness is not rocket science.

My source for a lot of good recipes is Epicurious.com. Generally the recipes work very well and many do not involve a zillion different ingredients. Cook's Illustrated is terrific. Last month I found out why my biscuits are always heavy and how not to do that. What's not to love about that? In fact, the mark of a good cook, I think, is someone who can make things taste marvelous in the simplest way possible.

I come from a long line of lousy cooks, it's absolutely true. All of the women on both sides of my family hated cooking and did it as little as possible. Any recipe that they consider "traditional" would choke a goat.

We're doing dinner with friends this year, and their tradition is to never use a recipe twice. Every single year, every dish has to be a brand-new recipe. It's turning out to be a good deal of fun. We've been researching and making shopping lists for days now. There's nothing on the list that we can't find easily, either. Who has time to run to three different grocery stores?

The logic behind this is that it's no fun standing around in the kitchen doing the same old stuff every year. The people at dinner are all friends, so if something doesn't work, they won't care. If they do comment on it? Well, that's one empty seat at next year's table.

Have a fun Turkey Day!

buy your own carnberries cook with water cook in sauce pan until they pop open then add sugar and knox unflavored gelatin this makes cranberry sauce sometimes you can add peeled oranges sliced with juice

order out from a gourmet type resturant seafood aor ham and goody type place good eating and no worries everyoe wil love this

No such things as foodies? Then who are all those people who, when I tell them that I have had an excellent meal at X, inform me that my taste buds are untrained and I'll eat sawdust if there's enough mayo on it?

Foodies = food snobs.

Thank you, dear, for the cranberry sauce recipe. It is the one I have used since my son was small. We love watching the berries pop.

But that, again, is not the point. The point is that the author insists on presenting cooking as arcane knowledge, of which purchasing the mythical half can is a metaphor.

I recommend cutting up two or three oranges and boiling then with fresh cranberries. Go easy on the sugar -- you can always add more.

Cooking cranberries is easy. Why used canned ones? What is hard is pearl onions. Even when you parboil them before cutting off the outer layer, they are still a lot of work. But worth it!

I don't know if they're available everywhere in the country, but many markets carry two sizes of canned cranberry sauce. the larger, more common size is 16 oz, and the smaller one is about 8 oz. that's probably what the author was refering to when she said "a half can" of cranberry sauce.

The author can be a bit of a pill. There really isn't anything arcane or even complicated about good cooking. If you are good at the basics (I'm assuming you are), then all you have to do is mess with your food once in a while.

What irks me is that so many people seem terrified of trying anything new. They keep making the same old stuff night after night after night and don't seem to care about their food at all. Mess with your food! What's wrong with changing things around? Try your garnet yams mashed with banana and curry powder - it tastes great.

We're doing all new recipes for this year's dinner, but very few of those have more than four ingredients, five if you start counting seasonings, I suppose. Every single thing we're making is from ingredients that you can get at any grocery store, too.

It was rainy and nasty outside yesterday and there was no way I was driving to potentially five different stores to get the stuff for dinner. It's snowing now....ick.