Happy Thanksgiving! Everything is working toward a day of fine feasting. Plenty of turkeys are coming despite the fact that the crop is less this year than for 1945. But don't get excited; you are'nt going to miss out on that second drumstick. Turkey production is down 12 per cent, but large cold storage stocks bring estimates up to last year's record of almost four and one-half pounds of turkey per person.
Turkey's consort, the cranberry, is a crop above average. The production is around 70,000,000 pounds as compared with the 64,000,000-pound harvest last year. A bit over half the crop is being canned, a little less than half goes fresh to the stores. A limited pack of cranberry juice cocktail is due. Remember that bright red and vibrant juice around before the war?
There will be a 500,000-case pack of orange cranberry marmalade, enough for national distribution. A new product packed this summer is an apricot cranberry mix, a delicious smooth combination to spread on hot buttered toast. It can be used as a cake filling or a tart stuffing. The fifteen-ounce jar, Ocean Spray brand, is selling at R. H. Macy's, Herald Square, for 39 cents.
Remember those plastic cutters in turkey, Christmas tree, and bunny shapes introduced several years back for the fancy cutting of cranberry sauce? These are in circulation again and in new styles, including chick, heart, and tulip. Three of these are free with three Ocean Spray labels.
Grace Rush, the Cincinnati packer of the Martha Ann specialities, has one of the outstanding gift boxes of the holiday season. It's a green-lidded box with a shimmery sheen, a beauty for the money, $6.35 to $6.95, selling in fourteen cities and cram-packed with goodies. Off with the lid! It shouts “Merry Christmas!” See what you get. First out is a nine-ounce jar of spiced almonds for serving at the eggnog table or with the after-dinner coffee. There is the famous Martha Ann conserve made with gooseberries and a medley of fruits and nuts to give crunch. Rich eating in that pound jar of ginger conserve. Fresh fruits, raisins, walnuts join with the ginger.
Never a Rush box made up but a block of the Rush fruit cake goes in. The cornerstone of the business, this English fruit cake with the Southern variations is made from the recipe of a Mrs. Emma Peebles Blanton who was born in St. Petersburg, Virginia, in 1836. The ingredients are of the best and include ten varieties of fruit and four kind of nuts. Mrs. Rush uses but nine pounds of flour to one hundred pounds of cake. The cakes are preserved in bonded brandy and long-cured. After baking they are put away in a light, airy room which is kept at a temperature of 36 degrees. There the cakes slumber in brandy for eight months to a year and a half before being shipped.
The fruit loaves are so rich and moist that they substitute nicely for plum pudding. Cut the cake in thick slices and heat in a double boiler, then serve as plum pudding. A four-ounce jar of hard sauce accompanies the cake to be used as a topping. Two five-ounce boxes carry glaceed peels, one of orange, one of grapefruit. Here is the list of stores stocking this Christmas-cheer buy: John Wanamaker, Inc., Philadelphia and New York City, Hutzler Brothers, Baltimore, Maryland, Miller and Rhoads, Inc., Richmond, Virginia, S. S. Pierce Company, Boston, Massachusetts, L. Bamberger and company, Newark, New Jersey, Joseph Horne Company, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, City of Paris, San Francisco, California, Frederick and Nelson, Seattle, Washington, Halle Brothers, Cleveland, Ohio, The J. L. Hudson company, Detroit, Michigan, Nieman-Marcus Company, Dallas, Texas, J. W. Robinson, Los Angels, California Davison-Paxon company, Atlanta, Georgia, Marshall Field and Company, Chicago, Illinois. In New York City the box is handled by Stumpp and Walter, 132 Church Street, Hammacher Schlemmer, 145 East 57th Street, B. Altman's, Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, and Bloomingdale's, Lexington Avenue and 59th Street.
Membership opens in a year-around connoisseurs' fruit club bringing a full twelve-month procession of America's finest fruits from the romantic valley of Oregon's Old Stage Road. Stagecoach Orchards is the name of the ranch which offers to supply superb apples, pears, peaches, and other rare fruits. The packer, Gordon Green, has “been in fruit” for twelve years but always working for somebody else.
His fruit club venture is being limited in its membership. He wants only as many customers as he can take care of himself, supplying the bulk of the fruit from his own orchards. He grows the du Comice pears, the ones so sweet and tender they can be eaten with a spoon. He grows immense Delicious apples, mammoth Hale peaches, magnificent d'Anjou and juicy, sweet summer Siskiyou pears, as well as other varieties.
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