Dearest Blog,

I learned quite a few years back that there are certain times when menu experimentation is welcomed but traditional holiday meals are not one of them…at least not with my family.
I am reminded of the time many years ago I decided it would be fun to stray from the tried and true celery, sage and onion stuffing to venture into cranberry, apple and sausage territory.

FAIL. BIG FAIL. You don’t mess with the best part (some would say the point) of the whole meal.
You’d think I would have learned from this debacle dear Blog, but as usual you would be wrong.
This year I decided I was so sick and tired of cranberries-in-everything anymore (damn, those cranberry marketing people are GOOD) that I banished the sauce from the table.

In our family, most people tend to give cranberry relish the side-eye at Thanksgiving and Christmas even when I go to the trouble of creating a fresh cranberry masterpiece from scratch instead of dumping a blob of it from a can into a bowl. We’re just not big cranberry sauce eaters.
So I thought it would be a really safe bet to have a cranberry-free table and sub with IKEA’s lingonberry sauce instead, to see if that was better received. It’s red, it’s tart, it’s tasty with savoury stuff like…I don’t know…Swedish meatballs? What’s not to love about lingonberry sauce???
YEAH, about that. Forgot that it wasn’t going to be just family at the table but a lovely couple of guests as well. Guess what? These guests LOVED cranberry sauce with their turkey.

Luckily for me they also LOVED lingonberry sauce and were OK with the swap. So the awkward moment was quickly smoothed over. Not a FAIL but a NEAR MISS.

Next year I will have both sauces at the ready.

Rock on,

The WB