CUMBERLAND — While the turkey likely will always hold center stage at Thanksgiving, the tangy cranberry seems destined to hold an important supporting role in the pageant of food that graces Thanksgiving tables in Western Maryland and across America.
Cranberries are part of family traditions.
“My Mom used to make the best cranberry relish. She would take the cranberries, some apples and some oranges, peel them all, and grind them up in an old handcrank table-top grinder. Then she would add sugar to flavor and let it sit a few days before Thanksgiving,” said Glenn C. Riffey of Cumberland. His mom’s tradition continues today. “My brother now makes it, when he thinks about it, and he does a pretty good job of it. But Mom’s was the best . ...”
Some other folks put cranberries on the turkey sandwiches made from leftovers on Friday.
Cranberries are native to North America and today are important to the agricultural economies of several states, especially Wisconsin and Massachusetts.
While cranberries sold in stores are cultivated in several states, wild cranberries grow in some areas of Western Maryland. The wild cranberries need cool temperatures to thrive, as they do in some area nature preserves and state lands. Cranberries can be found in the Cranesville Swamp, located in West Virginia and Garrett County, according to The Nature Conservancy, which is protecting the swamp.
“There are two types of cranberries at Cranesville. ... The large cranberry, whose shiny red berries can be up to one inch wide, is the same species grown for commercial harvest,” according to a pamphlet produced by the conservancy. The cranberries are eaten by birds, fox, raccoons and bears, the pamphlet says.
Cranberries also grow in the Finzel Swamp and the Mt. Nebo Wildlife Management area, according to the Department of Natural Resources. The bogs in which the berries grow are 18,000 years old, which rank them near the oldest peat bogs in North America, according to the DNR.
The United States Department of Agriculture predicted a 10 percent increase in the cranberry harvest in 2011, a prediction that seems to be coming to fruition. Cranberry production was expected to total more than 6 million barrels in 2011, with Wisconsin producing 4.30 million and Massachusetts 2.10 million of the total. A barrel of cranberries weighs 100 pounds.
“While most people think the majority of cranberries are consumed at Thanksgiving, about 20 percent are consumed during Thanksgiving week. The rest are consumed throughout the year in juice, as sweetened and dried products and as ingredients. The per capita consumption is a little over two pounds a year,” according to the website of The Cranberry Marketing Committee.
Like every other product, cranberries had an experience with negative publicity during the “cranberry scare” of 1959, according to the American Council of Science and Health. Just before Thanksgiving, a panic started when federal officials warned cranberries were contaminated with a weed killer that produced cancer in lab rodents. The actual fact was that the chemical would only cause problems at a level requiring consumption of 15,000 pounds of cranberries every day for years. Supermarkets stopped selling the berries and cranberry products. It took the industry a while to recover. But recover it did, as any Thanksgiving feast will show.
Contact Matthew Bieniek at mbieniek@times-news.com
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