October, and we were down on Cape Cod in the midst of the cranberry picking to visit the National Cranberry Association's packing plants, where the Ocean Spray products are put up for market, and to visit their kitchen at Hanson, Massachusetts. It was there we first clapped an eye on this year's handsome holiday gift box filled with cranberry delicacies. Here's the line-up: two cans of cranberry jelly, two cans whole cranberry sauce, one pint cranberry juice cocktail, one jar blended cranberry preserves, one set of plastic cutters, and a new cranberry recipe book.
A word about that cranberry juice cocktail, which is bottled in only limited amounts because dead-ripe berries are required for this, and the growers hesitate to hold their crops longer than necessary for fear of loss through some turn of the weather. At the Association headquarters, we were told of a new electric eye device, almost perfected, which will pick out the dark reds from the greens, thus releasing more fruit for making the nectar. The juice sells throughout New England, in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York. But anyone can get it anywhere by ordering the new Cranberry Sampler Box, one bottle included in each box. Address Ocean Spray, Department G-10, Hanson, Massachusetts, price ＄2.50 delivered.
Remember away back when, with a nickel to spend, you leaned on the grocer's candy case and studied the assortment? A momentous decision. Would it be the rock candy or the jawbreakers or licorice whips or barber poles or sour balls or a few, maybe, of each? Now for ＄1.50 you can buy the lot, 2 pounds, an assortment of 9 kinds, the box called the Penny Packer. A 5-pound selection of the old-timers is packed in a maple firkin topped with a tray of creamy mint and maple rosebuds, the price ＄4.95. Some may prefer the 7-inch bean pot holding 2 ¾ pounds of the old mouth-waterers topped with a layer of candy pork and beans, price ＄3.25. As Christmas gifts, these candy kits are different and delightful, beloved by young and old. Sent postpaid east of the Mississippi; elsewhere in the United States and Canada add 40 cents, for overseas, add ＄1. Address Wiggins Country Store, 38 Town Lane, Northampton, Massachusetts.
Firm, meaty nuggets the Ambernut hazelnut kernels and superior in size, in freshness and flavor, coming from the filbert groves of the inter-mountain valleys of Oregon and Washington. These nuts have been graded and developed to the highest degree for palatability and food value. Slow-roasted, vacuum-packed to insure extra crispness, offered are the full kernels, 8 ounces ＄1 prepaid, and chopped if you say, the 12-ounce jars ＄1.25. A special gift pack containing two jars, one of whole kernels and one of chopped, bedded in the unshelled nuts, may be had for ＄4.35 postage prepaid, shipped by Ambernuts Company, 806 S. W. Broadway, Portland 5, Oregon.
Filberts are one of the hazelnuts deriving from Europe, there named for St. Philibert. Prewar, this nut came by tons out of Italy, Sicily, Turkey, and Spain. Now we depend on the Washington and Oregon groves. Handsome crops there but the acreage is still small, the industry new. However, production in the North-west is on the increase, with hundreds of acres of trees soon to come into bearing.
Fruit fresh from Florida's Indian River citrus orchards, tree-ripened, juice-heavy, is being shipped by the bushel for the holiday season anywhere east of the Mississippi. Order direct from Hooper Groves, 1504 Forrest Avenue, Department G, Cocoa, Florida. Bonded growers the Hoopers, established in business since 1923. The 55-pound basket with oranges and grapefruit sells for ＄5.50; the de luxe assortment, oranges, grapefruit, tangerines, and tropical jellies and marmalade, topped off with pecans in shell and the dainty kumquats, sells for a bit more, price ＄7.50 and worth the extra money for the extra fancy nibbling.
Pepper basket is a gift to charm the heart of a gourmet. Little baskets carry five peppers, big baskets nine. First on the pepper list is a cayenne from the East Indies, hot, hotter, hottest. From Louisiana a similar pepper but milder, called Creole, to give that Southern accent to numerous dishes. The Lampong pepper is available in the corn, or have it ground as you please. The dried berry of this black pepper adds stimulating flavor to soups, to baked fish; it does a wonderful something in the pickle pot; handy for the pepper mill. In the ground form, good in any dish where pepper is desired. Unusual is Poivre Aromatique, a ground black pepper blended with other spices, most flavorful, something to substitute for ordinary black pepper when a truly spicy flavor is desired. There is a white pepper, divested of its outer shell, then ground, and quite mild in consequence, something to use in omelettes, mayonnaise, and dishes of neutral color, in which mildness is desired. There is a white decorticated pepper, in whole berry, its thin coating having been removed, leaving the very inner kernel of the corn, extremely mild, yet aromatic, to be used where great delicacy is required. Here's pepper from the Independent State of Nepal, situated in the northeastern frontier of India, a pepper often difficult to procure, this in a medium grind of bright yellowish red color, very full in flavor.
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