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#1
10-31-2004, 05:34 PM
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So, watcha doing for Thanksgiving?
I, for one, plan on doing two things:
-Being pretty miserable as one of a handful of people on campus not going home for the holiday. -Spending a lot of my completely empty 5-day weekend writing for NaNoWriMo. On that note, does anyone wanna give me a couple hundred bucks so I can fly cross-country home on Wednesday and then back on Sunday? 
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#2
10-31-2004, 05:45 PM
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Either sleeping late and then wasting the day away online or going with my boss and her husband to one of their family's get-togethers if she wants me to. Same for Christmas and New Year's.
I might get to go home next year. I don't know for sure though.
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#3
10-31-2004, 06:12 PM
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Same thing I have been doing for the last 20 years. Head out into the desert with some friends, and eat, drink, shoot, and bullshit the holiday away. We take trucks down a jeep trail, so there is no of this "backpacking, keep it light" crap. I have more burners on the stove in the boonies than I do at home. We do a full dinner: turkey (done differently each year), all the fixings, wine, all the Good Stuff. Three big 8 person tents, 8 ice chests, inflatable queen-sized bed, etc.
We call this "Roughing It." 
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#5
10-31-2004, 07:00 PM
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Quote:
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#6
10-31-2004, 07:10 PM
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One of the happiest Thanksgivings I spent was in Kuwait at Al Jaber AB. It was right after 9/11, I had a lot of good people with me, and the Kuwaitis bought us a huge feast, to the order of six figures. I reenlisted one of my guys that afternoon, right in front of an alert-parked A-10, signed the paperwork on an AGM-86 missile, and left for the chow hall. Everyone's spirits were high, and it's one of the best memories I'll keep to this day.
This year, my folks are flying out from New Jersey to see me in 'my element', and my girlfriend is hopefully going to make it out at the same time--meeting my folks. Most physicists would agree that mixing matter and antimatter would be a bad thing, but I'm thinking the cataclysmic event may result in good times being had by all. I would have said "may result in a ring being dropped to the aforementioned girlfriend", but I don't have the ring yet. . . Besides, I want to make that a quiet, personal thing rather than to have to put her on the spot like that. Tripler Aaaah yes. This year ought to be up there in the top ten.
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#7
10-31-2004, 07:12 PM
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I am being The Good Daughter
I'm going to visit my Mom in her assisted-living home, as nothing could possibly be more goddam suicidally depressing than Thanksgiving at an assisted-living home. I'll take her out for dinner, or cook with her in her apt. and maybe have one or two of her resident friends up.
I hate traveling on Thanksgiving, but I gotta rescue poor Mom.
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#8
10-31-2004, 07:25 PM
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We're hosting bits and pieces of each family. My inlaws and their dog are driving up from Ocala. My daughter is flying up from Orlando. My mom and aunt, my two sisters with their respective gentlemen, and (very much an outside chance) my brother will be driving down from the Baltimore area. I may invite some unattached friends, should I feel sympathetic stirrings.
I need to figure out where I can get a table big enough. Our dining room table seats 8 in a pinch, and we'll have at least 11. I suppose 11 TV trays would be kinda tacky??
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#9
10-31-2004, 11:03 PM
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Being British, it isn't exactly my holiday, so my boss (also British) and I have decided to get drunk to celebrate "Thursday".
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#11
10-31-2004, 11:18 PM
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Boy, part of me wishes I could go back to Thanksgiving on my own....
This year, we're going to my brother's house the weekend before T'giving, and the rest of my family will be there, too. It's about a six-hour drive. We'll be home for T'giving day, so I'll probably make a basic T'giving meal, mainly because I love to cook T'giving food. (Seriously!!!) The weekend after T'giving, we'll go to DH's parents' house (about three hours away) where his siblings will congregate as well. When I was in school and doing T'giving on my own, I generally tried to find others in the same boat so we could throw something together. I invited anyone I could think of, especially foreign students who had never seen Thanksgiving before, or people I knew didn't like to cook and planned Swanson TV dinners that night. (This can be fun even if you don't like to cook. Frozen turkey roasts and Stove Top stuffing are easy to fix and relatively cheap.) One year when DH and I were living in France, we hosted a T'giving meal in our apartment, and invited everyone we knew. There were only a couple of other Americans, but we made it potluck and insisted that people could bring anything they wanted, even if it wasn't traditional T'giving food. We provided the turkey and stuffing. Everything else was hodgepodge, with lots of typically French food. I think that was the year we decided that homemade chocolate mousse actually *did* have a place at the Thanksgiving table, so now our kids are more used to seeing mousse than pumpkin pie for dessert.
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#12
11-01-2004, 06:42 AM
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Kiminy homemade chocolate mousse...mmmmm... That just might find its way to the table at the swampcave this year. See what happens when you blurt out stuff like that?
Thanksgiving day will be celebrated at my house this year. There's a bunch of us who "ain't from around here" who get together on turkey day. Everybody's in charge of bringing something. This year I'm doing the turkey and dressing and the gravy. I always do the gravy, even when I don't host. I go to the host's house and make the gravy because nobody else can do it right and we all know, if the gravy ain't right, then the whole meal is ruined, right? It's all about the gravy folks! Now, let me find that recipe for chocolate mousse. On Saturday I'll go up to my hometown and celebrate with the family. It'll be the first major holiday since dad died, so it may be a bit subdued just like it was the first Thanksgiving after my brother died but it'll still be good. It's lots of family and friends who get a second Thanksgiving dinner. Everybody knows two Thanksgiving dinners are better than one, provided the gravy is done right.
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#13
11-01-2004, 07:06 AM
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I'm going to Phoenix to have Thanksgiving with my mom. My sister and her family are driving in from San Diego.
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#14
11-01-2004, 10:39 AM
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Headed to Dublin Ireland for the week, meeting up with some friends who had a temporary transfer over there. On T-day I'll probably be in a pub somewhere, downing a pint of Guiness and listening to good live Irish session music.
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#17
11-01-2004, 02:36 PM
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Swampbear, I'm the designated gravy-maker too, no matter which side of the family I'm with. Gravy is important!
I'll be at my boyfriend's aunt's house, for the third year in a row. I'm now one of two good cooks, instead of three, as the third moved out of state and probably won't make it. We'll have forty-leven kids underfoot (two of them mine), and at some point in the day, the men will all troop out to the barn to discuss horses. We'll saddle one up for the kiddos if it's nice out. I think this year we'll deep fry a turkey again, so the men will congregate out front, smoking cigars and drinking beer, and the women will center around the kitchen. Fortunately, I've learned my way around my aunt's kitchen by now, so we can interact fairly smoothly. I do more cooking than she does, but she knows where to hide everything. I shall do the gravy, artichoke-parmesan sourdough stuffing, and possibly a pie. Our aunt will do our traditional green bean casserole and jello fluff. We will all circulate in and out of the house all day long, and it will be mucho fun. Those who do not cook will watch football, and probably also be those that do not clean, but they just get in the way anyway. Oh, and Kyla, the dogs get the scraps! And I'm thankful that I'm off the hook for hosting it for another year.
__________________
"I'm a dog in a world where people are more interested in cats; neither difficult, standoffish nor mysterious..." - Pam Houston, Sight Hound
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#18
11-01-2004, 02:51 PM
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I'll be in Sydney, Australia on business. I'll probably forget that the day even exists.
I spent one in Chunju, South Korea maybe nine years ago. There actually is (or was) a restaurant in Chungju that served very good traditional American food called the House of Pizza of all things. The Korean lady who ran the joint made an outstanding traditional Thanksgiving dinner which I ate with four co-workers. Haj
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#19
11-01-2004, 03:00 PM
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I'm having my mom to Thanksgiving at my house, and maybe a few friends, too. I'll likely spend all morning and afternoon cooking while my mom "supervises," then later takes the credit for the wonderful food she'll get compliments on, conveniently forgetting to mention that she made none of it, just like at Christmas. She'll simper a bit, and say coyly, "Oh, well, I'm just glad you like it." When we sit down to eat, I'll fend her off from overfeeding me, which will make her ask if *she* cooked the food badly, then I'll politely remind her that I cooked the food, it tastes good, but I'm really full. Then I'll clean up the kitchen by myself because, as everyone knows, whoever does the cooking (or pretends to have done the cooking) doesn't have to clean.
 Even though this sounds like torture, my mom can be amusing when she wants to be, but she gets really stressed and acts like the weight of the world is on her shoulders during holidays, even though my sister (when she's in town) and I usually do the bulk of the work. Must be a hangover from our childhood. Most importantly, my husband will be there. He's the only one who can make me laugh when I'm mad or upset and the only person who can keep me from going for my mom's throat when she pisses me off. While I think my mom occasionally deserves a dressing-down, I'd rather not do it while anyone else is present, and I don't stay mad for very long, so I'll likely forget to tell her off later in private.
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#20
11-01-2004, 03:01 PM
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The Holidays will be hard this year since I lost my Mom so recently. But I am going to do my best, I will be cooking and Son and his Fiancee will be coming to dinner.
I will probably cry a lot. Oh well, that just means I won't need to use as much salt.
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#21
11-01-2004, 03:01 PM
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Cardsfan is going deer hunting from Nov 10-20th, then I am going home to visit my mom on Nov 21-23. Then we are spending a nice quiet 4 day weekend together in which I am preparing: turkey, dressing, garlic mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, etc etc. Yes, it is only for the two of us, and we always have a ton of leftovers, but then again, that is what those vacuum pack sealers are for. After all, just because there are two of us doesn't mean we don't like a homemade turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Last year, his brother showed up unannounced which was fine because we had lots of food.
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#22
11-01-2004, 03:14 PM
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The wife and I, our kids, my mother-in-law and my brother-in-law are all going to be boarding a cruise ship bound for Mexico in the morning. I can only imagine what kind of food and activities will be on tap. I have been on a cruise before, but never for Thanksgiving. I imagine it will be an interesting experience.
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#23
11-01-2004, 04:09 PM
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We're driving the two hours southeast to Gunslinger's family. That's what we're doing for Christmas, too. I'd love to go home to my family for a holiday, but that's a two-day drive or a plane ticket, so I doubt it will happen anytime soon.
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#24
11-01-2004, 04:36 PM
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We're going on a 400-mile round trip to have dinner with my wife's family and one of her grandmothers. I'm not much looking forward to it, because it'll turn out to be one of three things: dinner MIL cooked, none of which will be hot at the same time as the rest, or cold cuts like it was one year, or waiting an hour and a half to get into Cracker Barrel. I appreciate the togetherness thing, but it's a big switch for someone who came from a family where the women could cook like you couldn't believe!
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#25
11-01-2004, 04:44 PM
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Thanksgiving is at our house this year and everybody's invited. Seriously, any poor lil servicemen/women stuck at the base, or lonely college kids are always spoiled rotten if they are up to the wall of crazy that is my mom's family.
I hope to see the two new additions my cousins have made to the family and generally soak up enough family to last me through another year. Plus, there's the food which I'm still not old enough to cook (thirty is in the rearview mirror, but hands off the gravy, Ashes). There will surely be movie going and then maybe bars/restaurants visited for us young ones. I don't know why, it's what we do. Visiting, eating, cleaning, cards, flag football, movies, drinks.
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#27
11-01-2004, 06:27 PM
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As usual, dinner will be at my brother's house, but this year there are two major changes:
1. I get to cook something. My sister-in-law has decided she no longer wants to do it all, so I have volunteered the pie, since I want to try a new sugar-free recipe so I can eat some of it. But since I can't let that day be the recipe's maiden voyage, I will be testing it out this week here at home. 2. My sister-in-law's family is coming, too, so there will be lots more people to talk to, and maybe I won't fall asleep on the couch like last year.
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#29
11-01-2004, 07:14 PM
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I'm flying out Wednesday morning, to my parents' house. My oldest brother and his wife are coming in for Thanksgiving, so since I can only make it down for one of the two holidays, I figured I'd go down then. I fly back up here Saturday.
I also got a really good ticket deal - less than $200 into Chattanooga, TN, which never happens from anywhere. Ok, so I have to drive to Cleveland to leave, but it's either Cleveland, Pittsburgh or Akron/Canton - and Cleveland had the lowest price.
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#30
11-01-2004, 07:45 PM
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My daughter is in college in SanLuis Obispo, and my sister lives there also.
So we are doing T-day there. This involves some unique logistics, since I am the designated turkey cooker. I will brine and prep a turkey in LA, pack the turkey on ice, along with the Weber and our stuff and head up to SLO. Cook on Thursday and head home on Friday.
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#31
11-01-2004, 08:10 PM
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My husband and I had this plan earlier this year, where we were going to tell our respective families that we were going to the other's for the weekend, then my partner-in-crime and I were going to run off and go camping.
We hit a little bump in that plan when we found out that I'm pregnant and will probably not be up for camping. Plus, once we told his family about it, they claimed us for Thanksgiving and we're pretty much stuck. I'll probably end up cooking, too (it's either cook and have a good dinner, or leave the work to my MIL, who freaks out halfway through and will end up serving dinner at 11 PM).
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#32
11-01-2004, 08:22 PM
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Snorkeling in St. Johns, US Virgin Islands!! I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to avoid the turkey for years. It's come down to leaving town! The daughters go to their in-laws now and I truly hate to cook. Maybe we'll have lobster for Thanksgiving! (If someone else makes it.)
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#33
11-02-2004, 12:39 AM
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I'm having dinner at my house for my family of four, my mom, my brother, and my mother- and father-in-law. And NinjaChick, if you can find a ride down from Santa Fe, you're invited, too. We'll be having turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes and homemade rolls and two or three kinds of pie and succotash (because my mother insists on it) and homemade cranberry sauce (because my mother-in-law makes it) and probably a bunch of other stuff that we would be delighted to send back to college with a starving student. Come to think of it, since my inlaws live south of Santa Fe, if you're interested, we might be able to finagle a ride for you, too.
We usually have between four and fifteen cousins who come from Colorado and Arizona on Wednesday night and stay until Sunday morning, but this year my mom is recovering from hand surgery and isn't up to having houseguests. She also gets out of making pies, although she'll be supervising her granddaughters while they do it for her. And, to top it all off, I just found out that R.E.M. will be playing the Kiva Auditorium (cap. 2300) on the Sunday night after Thanksgiving. This means I'll be going to the show with six or eight out-of-town guests who are also rabid fans and they'll be sleeping over Saturday and Sunday night. Email me if you're even a little interested in participating in some or all of the festivities - it beats sitting in an empty dorm!
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#34
11-02-2004, 02:45 AM
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I think Dr. J will be off on Thanksgiving, or at least get out of the hospital early enough for us to have dinner before I go to work. We'll eat, then I'll go to work and eat again, while listening to the daytime ICU techs who volunteered to work the evening shift bitch about working so late. (They're nice folks, but one more whine about how they have to get up and go to work the next morning, and I'm pasting them in the face with a pumpkin pie. They're the ones who didn't want to work the daytime shift because it cut into time with their families, so they need to just suck it up.)
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#35
11-02-2004, 02:59 AM
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Going to Mom's house, about a 15-minute drive from here. We are trying to get my grandmother to come up from Florida - my grandfather died a couple of months ago, and we're hoping a change of scenery will do her good. We usually all chip in and cook - Mom does turkey, stuffing, gravy, homemade cranberry sauce, and a couple other things, my sister does her famous Stove-Top Stuffing (the only kind she'll eat), and I do sweet potatoes, dill and rosemary bread, pie (Derby pie has been voted the hands-down favorite, and I might not be allowed in if I do anything else), and depending on how many other people are coming, maybe another side dish.
We have discovered the route to a stress-free (OK, maybe not stress-free, but reduced-stress) family Thanksgiving is to get Mom plastered first. Luckily, this isn't difficult - it takes about 2 glasses of wine.
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#36
11-02-2004, 09:48 AM
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This T'giving will be unique for us. We ALWAYS stay home for holidays - until now. We've just acquired a new (used) boat which will be our retirement home and that's where we plan to spend both T'giving and Christmas. The galley has an oven that does not have a thermostat and I've never had to regulate oven temperature manually. Should be interesting. Maybe I'll try to roast a chicken rather than a turkey. Or maybe we'll have something simpler - or maybe even go to a restaurant if we're not out on the water. In any case it will definitely be an adventure.
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#37
11-02-2004, 11:52 AM
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Quote:
My mother, my next-to-oldest brother and I are the only ones I know who can do giblet gravy right. By the way, gravy is not just important, it is essential. Everything else revolves around it. All other food exists to enhance the gravy. Giblet gravy is the true meaning of Thanksgiving. Always remember that people.And we are sooooo gonna have homemade chocolate mousse this year. I'm practicing making it this weekend.
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#38
11-02-2004, 11:58 AM
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Ah, phew, my invitation just came through -- I'm going over to NJ (about ah hour away) to have dinner with some folks who've been friends so long they're honorary family. (We vacation together every year, go there Xmas Eve, etc.) My BIL's mother has reached a level of truly grim decrepitude that I'm off the hook on going over there to see her -- and my BIL and sister will be swinging by to see the folks I'm eating with after leaving her.
I'll be making broccoli and cheese -- made with Stouffers Welsh Rarebit, it's quite yummy, and doesn't overburden my culinary talents.
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#39
11-02-2004, 12:14 PM
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As another Brit it is not really my holiday so I have offered to be on call for my department so that the everyone else can be with their families. I do however now have 5 different invites for lunch/dinner/dessert/drinks as everyone for the second year running here in Wyoming has taken pity on the single English girl! So depending on how busy work gets I may get paid holiday pay, do nothing and get to eat a lot of great food!
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#40
11-02-2004, 12:30 PM
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Airman will be home, so we'll spend Thanksgiving with his family this year. Then, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I get to engineer three basketball games and a football game. I dislike Thanksgiving for personal reasons, so I volunteered to cover the games. I've got two books on Soviet history to keep me company.
Robin
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