A serious question, worth serious consideration: Why don’t we eat cranberry sauce, like, all the time?

I get why other foods are slotted into the once-a-year special guest category. Latkes, as we all know, are a real pain in the ass to form and cook, with the grating and the squeezing and the frying and the draining; so, I would imagine, are tamales, which is why assembling them has become an annual tradition for zillions of Mexicans and Mexican-American families. You don’t throw together an incredibly labor intensive dish like these any old day—you save them for capital-O Occasions, both to justify the work they require and to lend the event where you’re serving them an extra air of celebration. Continue reading →