Thanksgiving hits and horror

As we're creeping up to US Thanksgiving, anyone want to share their Thanksgiving stories? What are the best or worst Thanksgiving you've had or attended?

I'm pretty lucky. My family doesn't really have "bad" Thanksgivings. Everyone gets along (mostly -- except when my dad and Aunt get into politics.) Thanksgiving has always been a happy holiday. Best stories I can come up with:

My daughter is a pretty picky eater. When she was very young, she didn't like turkey. My Mom, who would slave for days to make Thanksgiving dinner, was horrified when we would bring a can of spaghetti-os for the picky eater. I started doing Thanksgiving myself after a couple of years which reduced some of the perceived insult, plus my daughter (who is 19 now) started appreciating turkey.

Last year. My wife and I normally host Thanksgiving, but last year we took an anniversary trip to Cancun and didn't get back until only the weekend before. My brother said that he'd host instead. (It turned out that was a great idea, since my house lost power due to a storm at about 930 the night before, and didn't get power back until 11am T-Day!) Anyway, we trooped do to my brothers place about 30 minutes from home. And all was going great. My brother is a great cook, and he was deep frying 2 turkeys. However, the other guests were all from his wife's family, and who we didn't really know. And what a morose bunch. Although the parents tried at conversation, the kids were terrible. They were all around my daughters age (late teens-early 20s), and it seemed as through they'd all have some things in common (gaming, music, anime). The other kids just turned on the TV and stared at it the whole time. Even when they'd talk about the shows, they would whisper to each other, pointedly leaving my daughter out of it. When she tried to initiate some conversation, they would act all affronted like she couldn't possibly know as much as they did about whatever subject. It was really uncomfortable for her. I was kind of pissed because she's an only child and has always been the only kid at Thanksgiving dinners. I'd been hoping that this might be lots more fun for her, with other young people and not being totally tied only to "grown-ups" conversations. I felt really bad, and on the way home, told her that we'd do something special that weekend to make up for it. So took her to her favorite steakhouse.

My best Thanksgiving -- when I was small (maybe about 8) and my uncle gave my a small telescope and took me out to go stargazing that night. Was awesome. He was always the "cool" uncle and was a scientist himself, so he always had cool, geeky, science-y stuff planned for Thanksgiving evening.

The first time my wife ate with my family, she was appalled. Being an Appalachian-American, she had grown up on the traditional mashed potatoes, green beans, gravy, homemade bread, etc. But she couldn't go back to the hills that year because she was 8 months pregnant.

At our house, the turkey came from the Country Club who had only cooked it half way so we had two more hours of drinking to do. We also had Sweet and Sour Green Beans, Corn Pudding, Scalloped Oysters, Rice with Gut Gravy(her description of giblet gravy) and store bought rolls. So not only did we have a possibly poisonous Turkey, there was little else she could eat. Then we went to my cousin's house to drink his liquor and stuck my wife on the couch with the crazy aunt who regaled her with stories of every woman she knew who died in child birth.

Mine "worst" turned out to be okay in the end but I wasn't so sure it was going to:
My first Thanksgiving with my (now wife) girlfriends family. We all got along fine and maybe that was the problem. See I had never even heard of fried turkey until meeting her family, nor had I EVER attempted to fry anything. Well not long into the frying process my to be father in law gets a call and walks away. He comes back a few minutes later adjusts something and says JP just keep the temp about where it is, I'll be back soon. I tried my best to keep the oil at whatever temp he told me but... I mean the whole set up had to be at least 25 years old which was older than me at the time! When he finally did come back he pulled the turkey up and yelled "Damn JP I'd say it's burnt!" he wasn't wrong! That sucker was black. He tried to tell me it's okay that the meat would still be okay but he disappeared awful quick and came back with a new turkey to fry. He told me the first one was all mine!

Picture it: Manhattan's Upper West Side, 2007.

We have a very small family, so our Thanksgiving is usually just my me, my wife, my mother, and my cousin. We were visiting my cousin in NY for the holiday. She's only about a half of a mile from the Macy's parade route so my wife and I thought it would be good to go see the parade.

So we strolled over and watched for a little while and on the way home, we found a hole in the wall little bar. Naturally, we had to check it out and they were giving away free Wild Turkey shots for Thanksgiving. So we spent about 2 hours there drinking craft beers and about 4 Wild Turkey shots each and made fast friends with the bartender who was a really sweet kid. We felt bad that she had to work on Thanksgiving, but it turns out that she volunteered because her family didn't eat until late in the evening. Thank goodness most of the streets are numbered and not named in the city. When we stood up at the bar, we realized we were a little drunk.

We found our way back to my cousin's place and were informed that they needed some turkey stock for the gravy, so they sent us back out to pick it up. We happened to pass back by the bar and our new bartender friend was standing in the doorway and suckered us back in (didn't take much). So it was an hour trip to get turkey stock. You know, all the pedestrian traffic from the parade held us up. Ha Ha.

I had one job. I had to make the potatoes. So I managed to get that done, though they were not the best effort of my usual "Thanksgiving" potatoes. We sat down to eat at around 4:00. I spilled the entire gravy boat all over the table, rug, wall, etc. . . My lovely wife fell asleep sitting up at the table. Suffice to say, this was not the best thanksgiving.

In terms of hits - last year was the best. In September we found out my mother had cancer. At first pass, the diagnosis didn't look like she would make it to the holidays. So the fact that we were able to celebrate with her was fantastic. She's still fighting, so we are looking forward to an even better one this year. We are skipping the morning cocktails to make sure.

My favorite thanksgiving was as a grown up hosting my side and my wife's side of the family. We cooked three turkeys. One was deep fried, another oven roasted and yet another in our Ronco rotisserie cooker. All three came out splendidly

I'll avoid a long narrative and leave it at this.

Jessy's Fried Turkey Journal:

FT-1) Wife leaves to pick up in-laws from airport. I begin heating the oil for the turkey. 10 minutes before dropping in the bird, the flame goes out inexplicably. I don't notice for 20 minutes. Dinner at 9:30, turkey was amazing.

FT-2) Thanksgiving Day, begin heating the oil and notice leaking. Pot is full of tiny holes after a year of storage. Frantically call all friends within 10 minutes driving distance. Only one (after calling 6) has a pot, he's not home but gives me the code to his garage! Get back home, realize the propane tank was left on!!! Out of gas! Call one more friend who is also not home, but always has extra tanks he keeps full. He gives me permission to open his garage (we have keys to each other's houses). Dinner sometime after 8:00, but turkey was awesome again.

FT-3,4,5) This year, I have to make 3 turkeys on Thanksgiving morning (lunch at noon-ish). 1 injected with a gluten free/soy free marinate (for my cousin and daughter), 1 injected with my dad's recipe (I'm frying so he can run a race that morning), and 1 with my recipe. Having learned a few lessons from years past, I'm hoping we can have lunch sometime before 5:00.

I brought shrimp for a Cajun boil one year to our family thanksgiving just to see what would happen. I'm just not a baked turkey fan. They took one look at the shrimp and all hell broke loose.

One year my wife brought an artisan bread. It had smoked cheeses on the inside and was absolutely delicious. The traditional roll....yep, you guessed it, was Brown n Serve. Anything else was forbidden. My aunt took a look at that artisan bread then gave an evil look to my wife. We didn't think she was going to make it out alive.


....no one ate the brown n serve.

DoctorShavegood said:

I brought shrimp for a Cajun boil one year to our family thanksgiving just to see what would happen. I'm just not a baked turkey fan. They took one look at the shrimp and all hell broke loose.

One year my wife brought an artisan bread. It had smoked cheeses on the inside and was absolutely delicious. The traditional roll....yep, you guessed it, was Brown n Serve. Anything else was forbidden. My aunt took a look at that artisan bread then gave an evil look to my wife. We didn't think she was going to make it out alive.


....no one ate the brown n serve.

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The good kind of "all Hell broke loose," or the bad kind?

One Thanksgiving was one of these, alone in a shabby apartment. Not a happy time.

jzuzphreek said:

The good kind of "all Hell broke loose," or the bad kind?

Click to expand...

I'm still trying to figure how that one turned out.

DoctorShavegood said:

I brought shrimp for a Cajun boil one year to our family thanksgiving just to see what would happen. I'm just not a baked turkey fan. They took one look at the shrimp and all hell broke loose.

One year my wife brought an artisan bread. It had smoked cheeses on the inside and was absolutely delicious. The traditional roll....yep, you guessed it, was Brown n Serve. Anything else was forbidden. My aunt took a look at that artisan bread then gave an evil look to my wife. We didn't think she was going to make it out alive.


....no one ate the brown n serve.

Click to expand...

I'm still trying to figure people out with the "Thanksgiving Rolls". For several years I made homemade sour-cream clover rolls. People would eat a few, but never as many as I expected. Then one year, I didn't make them and picked up pre-made rolls from the supermarket bakery. Heat and serve. They disappeared as soon as the plate hit the table. And these are all people that know good food -- but I guess people have a certain expectation for rolls to go with turkey dinner....

The weird thing is that everyone likes my rolls, people snack on them later in the day and also eat them for breakfast the next morning.