By Thanksgiving is in three weeks and I am making the cranberry sauce. I always make the cranberry sauce. I have been making it for three years. Fresh cranberries, orange zest, a little port, a little sugar. It takes twenty minutes and it is perfect and it is mine. This year I am also going to attempt something I have not attempted before: I am going to make the pierogi.
Not for Thanksgiving exactly — pierogi is a Christmas Eve food in this family — but as a practice run. I am going to make pierogi in November as a practice run for Christmas Eve, because this will be the first Christmas Eve without Babcia Rose at the table, and the pierogi have to be right, and I need more than one batch to get them right. Patty will help. We will make them together, two women learning to carry what a third woman carried, trying to do it justice.
The twins are twenty-two months old. Nora says everything. Thirty-eight words by last count, which I have stopped counting because the count is no longer useful, because she is now producing sentences of three and four words and the count has become insufficient as a measure. She says "Daddy at work" and "Owen no no" and "I want more please" with the syntactic confidence of a child who has decided that language is her medium and she is going to use all of it.
Owen said something new this week. He said: "I love you, Mama." Three words, morning, standing in the kitchen while I was making his oatmeal, he just said it, and then he looked at me and waited for the answer, which I gave him immediately, and then he went back to examining his truck. Just like that. The most ordinary extraordinary thing. I love you, Mama, said into the air of a Tuesday morning kitchen, offered and received and filed away forever.
I have the cranberry sauce handled. What I am still figuring out is everything else — how to fill a table that has a different shape this year, how to contribute something that feels worthy of the occasion without trying to replace what cannot be replaced. This Cinnamon Apple-Nut Salad is what I am bringing alongside the sauce: something autumnal and grounding, something that smells like every good Thanksgiving I have ever sat through, something the twins might actually eat. It is not pierogi. It is not Babcia Rose’s anything. But it is mine to bring, and that is a start.
Cinnamon Apple-Nut Salad
Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 0 min | Total Time: 15 min (plus 30 min chill) | Servings: 6
Ingredients
- 4 medium apples (a mix of sweet and tart, such as Honeycrisp and Granny Smith), cored and diced
- 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
- 3/4 cup walnuts or pecans, roughly chopped
- 1/2 cup celery, thinly sliced
- 1/3 cup raisins
- 1/3 cup mayonnaise
- 2 tablespoons honey
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- Pinch of salt
Instructions
- Prep the apples. Dice the apples into bite-sized pieces and toss immediately with the lemon juice in a large bowl to prevent browning.
- Make the dressing. In a small bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise, honey, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a pinch of salt until smooth and well combined.
- Combine. Add the chopped nuts, sliced celery, and raisins to the apples. Pour the dressing over the top and gently fold everything together until evenly coated.
- Chill. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before serving to let the flavors come together. The salad can be made up to 4 hours ahead.
- Serve. Give it a gentle stir before bringing it to the table. Taste and adjust — a little more honey, a little more cinnamon — until it feels right.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 218 | Protein: 3g | Fat: 13g | Carbs: 26g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 88mg