Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
As we shuffle off toward Thanksgiving (the holiday where I practice avoiding criticizing my relatives) I am reminded that in my family the most memorable Thanksgiving celebration was the one where we had to do without the main attraction. It just so happens that there is an irresponsible member of my family and at our joint harvest celebration what she was to bring was – you guessed it! – the turkey. She failed to show.
My kids were grammar school aged then. To this day my nieces can remember the Thanksgiving where we were doing a quick defrost of Cornish hens in a bathtub (‘bobbing for chickens’) while we did a fast readjustment to make up for the lack of a big bird. None were available in the remaining open supermarket. One of the gatherers happened to be a newspaper columnist and an account of the day ended up in a Colorado paper. We just made do.
It ended up a fun, memorable family event where the whole group learned that we could improvise. That was almost 40 years ago and I bet the incident comes up in conversation this month! Happy Thanksgiving, y’all! Be grateful.
'You never know how good a watermelon or a family is until they get thumped!'
When we lived in NY, we had friends and their two young children over for Thanksgiving dinner. Our college age son was off traveling with friends and left his Siamese cat with us. Undiagnosed at that time, the cat had a thyroid condition that made her ravenous.
The smell of roasted turkey proved to be too much! She jumped up and tried to get on the dining table where we were seated. We got her down but she went under the tablecloth where she proceeded to run across everyone’s lap. We had to hold the table cloth down to keep her from popping back up to get on the table. The kids were shrieking and we were all amazed at how incredibly fast she was as she zoomed from lap to lap. After several trips around we finally corralled her and put her in another room.
Those two little kid are in their mid-to-late thirties now and they still talk about the time they had Thanksgiving dinner with us. The cat is the star of that story!
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,662 posts, read 81,403,499 times
Reputation: 57917
I would never trust someone to bring the turkey, you can always manage with one or two less sides, by not the main dish. That can backfire too, though. One year when we just said "bring a side" we ended up with 3 green bean casseroles. We banned those after. The most memorable for me is the 2020, when we were in Covid lockdown mode before the vaccines, so everyone stayed home. We always cook for 10-16 people, so with only 3 it didn't seem like Thanksgiving, despite the (small) turkey.
We'd moved to Vancouver WA in 1985. Money was tight, so the local thtiftway was having a drawing for a free turkey. Well, I won and took the bird home, mom took one look and said "Fine, we'll cook it, but YOU are preparing it!"
So, that's how I learned to cook a turkey of 27 lbs. After that, I became the "Turkey Cook for T and C days" Mom said "I wish I'd taught you earlier"
The plus side was, I could buy a turkey any time and cook it, then have turkey salad for lunch, turkey sandwiches for weeks on end.
The pies, stuffing and gravy making, I still left to Mom.
This stood me in good stead as when I was in Missouri, thr church had a free dinner for Thanksgiving, I spent the day cooking 6 or 7 turkeys. Prep, basting and yes, even turning.
People couldn't believe my patience......neither could I.
My folks in their nineties had moved to the little island where I had moved in retirement, to be near me. They sent me off to spend thanksgiving with my cousins several states away, a long established tradition. Christmas had always been our big nuclear family celebration, so I believed their assurance that they didn’t mind at all. There was a community thanksgiving dinner on the big day, and a good friend promised to bring them dinner. He was busy with cleanup, so thought he had delegated the dinner drop off, but there was a misunderstanding and my folks had no dinner. They heated up a frozen entree. My friend felt awful, and apparently told a lot of people what had happened, because the next day not only did he drop off a belated thanksgiving dinner, but about 10 other people, all unbeknownst to each other, stopped by with dinners. My folks never laughed so hard, and never ate so much pie!
My most memorable and embarrassing Thanksgiving was getting thrown out of the house by my family after having too much to drink and passing out face down in the crotch of the turkey
Thanksgiving last year. Youngest DD came down with Covid a week before Thanksgiving, and I started with cold symptoms a few days later and ended up testing positive for it. We couldn't make the trip to my home town to spend the long holiday weekend with my elderly mother, brothers, oldest DD, grandsons, etc., like we do every year. Youngest DD, DH, and I were quarantined, but still managed to have a great dinner, just the three of us. I had most of the fixings and oldest DD had dropped off a turkey breast, and I baked a pumpkin pie. I even managed to find in a closet an unopened dollar store paper Thanksgiving tablecloth and turkey decoration. We got out the good dishes and glassware, lit candles, opened a bottle of wine, and ate in the dining room. I missed being with my folks (who were very disappointed we couldn't come) and the table felt empty. DD's and my appetites were a bit diminished from being sick.
DD was quite ill with a fever and chest congestion. Mine was just bad cold symptoms. We were both well enough to enjoy the holiday and each other, and be grateful for DD's successful recovery (and that DH never got it).
Last edited by Mrs. Skeffington; 11-13-2022 at 07:44 AM..
Best memories - growing up in the ‘60s my grandparents lived about 1,000 miles away from us so we didn’t see them much. My grandpa worked for the B&O railroad so they always came for Thanksgiving on his pass. Dad took all of us kids to the train station in downtown Chicago on Thanksgiving morning to pick them up. It was always colder than heck but always great to see them!
In my 20s I lacked a lot of self confidence and always said “there’s no way I could cook Thanksgiving.” My sister came one year and convinced me to try. And guess what…I did it!
Worst memory - the year my adult nephew blew up over a political remark and stormed out of the house. He has since totally alienated himself from the entire family and we haven’t seen him in years.
Recently- T-Day 2009, while the dinner was ok, it was the next morning when the world went crazy! Tiger Woods got into a car wreck and then the women fell out of the woodwork (or diner, or nightclub or where ever he met them).
There was a family T-day in the early 80's where the booze was flowing and the Turkey was in the oven yet nobody realized until too late the oven was broken........that was a vegetarian T Day!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
