- Now a Thanksgiving dinner staple, cranberries were not eaten by Native Americans but used to treat arrow wounds and to dye clothes.
- The Pilgrims named the fruit “craneberry” because their drooping heads in the spring reminded them of a crane.
- The top cranberry growing states are Wisconsin, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington.
- The Cape Cod Cranberry Company produced the first canned Cranberry sauce in the early 1900s.
- Only 5% of cranberries grown are sold fresh, the remaining percent are sold as cranberry juice, cranberry sauce, etc.
Apparently going home for the holidays means meeting up with old friends and family members and heading out to the local bar! The night before Thanksgiving is the biggest night of the year for bar sales, even bigger than New Year’s Eve, St. Patrick’s Day, and The Super Bowl.
- About 50% of Americans stuff their birds with stuffing (or “dressing”)
- There are regional differences with stuffing- in the South cornbread stuffing is popular, and white bread is common is most other parts of the country. Although, there are many variations to ingredients added with the bread.
- Stuffing dates back to the Roman Empire, where the ancient cookbook “Apicius de re Coquinaria” had recipes that called for stuffed chicken, rabbit, pork and more.
- The brand Stove Top introduced their famous boxed stuffing in 1972.
- Stove Top now sells around 60 million boxes of their stuffing around Thanksgiving.
- There is no evidence to support that stuffing was served at the first Thanksgiving.
Green bean casserole was invented in 1955 by Campbell’s.The recipe was originally created for an Associated Press holiday food feature. The recipe supervisor at the New Jersey Campbell Soup home economics kitchen is credited with creating the ubiquitous Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup recipe. Campbell’s estimates that it sells more than $20 million dollars of that variety every year.
- Pumpkins are 90% water.
- Early colonial settlers used pumpkin for the crust of pies rather than the filling.
- Pumpkin is a fruit.
- Pumpkins grow on 6 of the 7 continents.
- Illinois, California, Pennsylvania and New York are the major pumpkin-growing states, together they produced 1.1 billion pounds of pumpkin in 2010. Total U.S. production was over 1.5 billion pounds.
- Pumpkins come in a variety of colors including: green, red, yellow, white, blue, tan and of course orange.
- According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest pumpkin pie ever baked weighed 2,020 pounds and measured just over 12 feet long. It was baked on October 8, 2005 by the New Bremen Giant Pumpkin Growers in Ohio, and included 900 pounds of pumpkin, 62 gallons of evaporated milk, 155 dozen eggs, 300 pounds of sugar, 3.5 pounds of salt, 7 pounds of cinnamon, 2 pounds of pumpkin spice and 250 pounds of crust.
We Consume an Average of 3,000 Calories at Thanksgiving.
From the butter volcano in the mashed potatoes to the mishmash of sweet potato casserole and cornbread stuffing slathered in gravy, each American is estimated to consume anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 calories at the average Thanksgiving meal.