Country Crock Limited Edition. Shedd's Spread Cinnamon, Honey, and Pumpkin Spice Spreads, and Mashed Sweet Potato Side Dish. $3.69 per 22-ounce tub of refrigerated side dish, or 99 cents per 9-ounce spread.
Bonnie: Thanksgiving is a time to enjoy the camaraderie of cooking in the kitchen and the resulting enticing aromas and delicious food. It's no time for microwavable foods.
Certainly the holidays are not time to be serving these additive-laden, horrid-tasting microwavable Country Crock Mashed Sweet Potatoes. It's especially crazy when making sweet potatoes is so easy: Just boil some peeled and chunked potatoes until soft (about 15 minutes), and then drain and mash them with a little butter and brown sugar or maple syrup.
I also wouldn't let these time-limited spreads near my holiday table. Although they taste better than the potatoes, they consist mainly of vegetable oil, sugars (high fructose corn syrup) and flavorings. In other words, sweetened fat. Show your guests how truly thankful you are for their presence by putting out some pure creamery butter instead.
Carolyn: Vegetables and spreads on Thanksgiving tables are traditionally there to satisfy Americans' taste for fat and salt. These seasonal offerings from Country Crock are also going for sweet. The Mashed Sweet Potatoes are seasoned like pumpkin pie and also taste like they contain cream.
I am even less of a fan of Country Crock's Honey Spread. It's as if someone dumped the sugar bowl in regular Country Crock. In other words, it seemed both weird and too sweet, especially when used on a sweet breakfast bread or muffin.
The Cinnamon and Pumpkin Spice are also sugary but much better. These are less like margarine and more like apple butter (a spreadable fruit puree, for those who've never had it). I loved them both, especially the unusual Pumpkin Spice. It tastes best on things that are not already sweet. Put it out on Thanksgiving alongside some biscuits or rolls or cornbread, and sit back and wait for the compliments. I guarantee you'll get some.
McCormick Turkey Rub. $2.79 per 2.7-ounce canister.
Bonnie: This new turkey rub almost had me singing Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair," with its combination of dried sage, rosemary and thyme. Only that tune's parsley is missing.
As you can tell from the supermarket spice shelves, rubs are becoming increasingly popular. They typically blend salt and spices, adding lots of sodium to your foods. McCormick Turkey Rub is no exception. There are about 6,000 (yes, 6,000!) milligrams of sodium in the one-third of a cup that the company suggests you use on a 12- to 15-pound turkey. That's equivalent to about 2.5 teaspoons of salt.
This new rub can make seasoning your holiday turkey a tad easier. For maximum flavor, gently loosen the skin of the breast and thighs — being careful not to tear it — and rub the seasoning under the skin. (If you accidentally do tear the skin, sew it together using a needle and twine, or fasten with a toothpick to keep the meat from drying out.)
Carolyn: A lot of people seem to think fresh turkey tastes better than frozen. But that's only if you know how to prepare it. So the road to a self-righteously less-processed turkey is paved with dry and tasteless turkey meat. That's because the fresh ones aren't pumped up with oil and flavor enhancers like the frozen ones. This turkey rub can help. With it, there's no need to hunt down and blend seasonings that would taste good on turkey. Just butter your bird and rub it on.
One way McCormick could make this even more convenient? If it packaged this rub in individual packets premeasured for the most common-size Thanksgiving birds.
Jennie-O Turkey Store Oven Ready Home Style Turkey Breast. Bone-in and Boneless. $2.69 per pound of bone-in, and $3.79 per pound of boneless.
Bonnie: Last year at this time we gave a rave review to Jennie-O Turkey Store's then brand-new Oven Ready whole and half turkeys. In case you missed it, those turkeys are almost foolproof to prepare. You literally take the frozen turkey out of the outer wrapping, poke a hole in the inner wrapper, then place it in a roasting pan and into the oven. I was also amazed by the non-salty flavor of the meat (despite some additives) and its moistness.
This year for Thanksgiving, Jennie-O has expanded the line to include bone-in and boneless breasts, which are good options for small families who don't want to roast a large bird. They also added a gravy packet.
The gravy is low in fat and modest in sodium, but it doesn't taste good enough for a holiday feast. You can easily make your own by carefully straining the drippings from the bag into a saucepan and whisking in some flour Because it's packaged with the turkey, you're paying the same $3 to $4 a pound for this mediocre gravy concentrate as you are for this wonderfully convenient turkey. That's outrageous. It's another reason I'm hoping Jennie-O takes out the gravy packet.
Carolyn: Guess which of the following things that I did today took the most time and trouble: (1) Tracking down interview subjects by phone for a feature story. (2) Picking up a package delivered to a neighbor in my absence. (3) Writing about some products for this column. Or (4) Cooking a 6-pound turkey breast.
The answer is No. 3. (Working hard for you, as always.) But I wouldn't blame you if you picked No. 4: Roasting a turkey has traditionally been fraught with fuss.
That bad food tradition was broken last year with the introduction of Jennie-O's freezer-to-oven Oven Ready Turkey. This year the company has expanded the line to include 2.5- to 3-pound boneless and 5- to 7-pound bone-in breasts for families who fight over the white meat. These are also the first Jennie-O Oven Ready Turkey packaged with gravy. Like the meat, it comes frozen and requires little preparation (just add water and heat).
The turkey breast meat that emerges after three unattended hours in the oven is moist, tender, sweet — in short, perfection. (And this is from someone who usually doesn't like white meat turkey because of how dry and tasteless it generally is.) The gravy, though good, couldn't help but disappoint by comparison. (Heck, most people's homemade pumpkin pie couldn't stand up to the standards of Oven Ready Turkey meat.)
The ambitious could, as Bonnie suggests, always make their own from the juice that spills forth when you finally open the Oven Ready bag. (In fact, I think Jennie-O should think about providing a packet of flour and seasonings and instructions in lieu of an only-OK premade gravy.) But this white-meat turkey is simply the best.
Bonnie Tandy Leblang is a registered dietitian and professional speaker. Carolyn Wyman is a junk-food fanatic and author of "Better Than Homemade: Amazing Foods That Changed the Way We Eat (Quirk). Each week they critique three new food items. © Universal Press Syndicate