Turkey Day! So named because I was born then. Really, it’s all my fault!
Any Thanksgiving memories, traditions, reminiscenses, wierdnesses?
-Though my name means ‘Christmas’, I was born on Thanksgiving; my dad was supposedly hunting deer at the time, but I have a suspicion there’s more to that story.
-Thanksgiving was often at my grandma’s house, with turky AND ham AND potato pancakes AND peach/apple/whatever pies; her crusts always fell apart but were soooo good to eat.
-I have yet to host a Thanksgiving at my own house; once, in college, my roommates folks came down for the weekend, and I thought we would do it then, but my roomate said “Nope; we go to the movies on Thanksgiving!” That was the first time I had heard of that kind of tradition, and thought it was weird. But it was fun!
-When I was 16, we’d been in our new house after a huge move for only a day or two. My birthday was the day before Thanksgiving that year, and I’d been in bed with a serious flu the whole time. So on Thanksgiving, when I was feeling better, we pretended THAT was my birthday and had cake and stuff then. Which I promptly threw up all over the place.
A few years ago I met someone of Middle Eastern descent. They usually had TDay dinner with her family, where they had traditional Middle Eastern foods plus a roast turkey.
One year she had dinner with her husband’s family. She was amazed at the stuffing. It was the best part of the meal! She didn’t know anything could taste like that.
As it turns out, in her own family, they just put a few pieces of bread in the turkey’s cavity, because that’s just what you’re supoosed to do.
My grandmother hosted Thanksgiving in my youth, then my mother took over and does it till this day. Most of our dishes are pretty traditional, but there’s one that I’ve never seen anywhere else.
You peel sweet potatoes and boil them till they’re cooked thru. Then you slice them into 1/2" (or so) thick hocky pucks. These are fried in butter till they’ve got a black crust on the outside.
Apparently they have to be burnt. Personally, I don’t like them, but my mom and a couple of my sisters inhale them. My grandparents loved them, too. I’d prefer a baked sweet tater, especially instead of the marshmallow topped version - that’s waaaaaaay too sweet for me.
I did turkey dinner a few times, but our house is too small for a big gathering. So I bake the pies and take them to Mom’s. Which reminds me - I need to make sure I’ve got pie makin’s…
I can do everything in my apartment for a tiny gathering, but it’s a pain.
I used to cook for an ex. Since her apartment was right down the hall from mine, it was pretty easy. I’d go over to her place in the morning and make the stuffing, then stuff the stuffing into the bird, then stuff the stuffed bird into her oven.
Then I’d go back to my place and make everything else. Since I had a probe thermometer with a remote monitor, I could watch the turkey cook from my apartment.
Hated Thanksgiving as a kid - we had to go to my paternal grandparents’ house…loved them but loathed my Aunt and Uncle and their three obnoxious kids. My aunt could only speak in a VERY LOUD voice and she never shut up; my uncle was the worst of the right wing nut jobs and pontificated at every dinner; they would watch one football game after another after another, all day; the TV had to be up full volume to drown out the voice of my aunt. Let’s just say it was 10 hours of sheer agony.
Now I make the dinner at home. I buy the biggest turkey that can fit in the trunk of my car, even though there are only two of us. It is the same amount of effort (none really) to make a huge turkey versus a smaller one. Slap it in the oven and leave it alone! (Don’t bother basting it - useless and needless.) All leftovers freeze quite nicely, and use the remains to make a big pot of broth to be used for countless recipes. Side dishes can be semi-prepared in advance and tossed into the oven when you take the turkey out and let it sit before carving.
Never understood the problem people have making Thanksgiving dinner - I have it down to a science and can (literally) do it half asleep. Plus, pound for pound there is nothing cheaper than a turkey at Thanksgiving - so this huge dinner costs less than any other big Sunday dinner, by far.
Oh - I do remember doing Thanksgiving dinner in Berlin once, and an American woman and I made two pumpkin pies - from scratch (using real pumpkins). Trust me, I will NEVER do that again! Took forever to make and the guests wolfed it down in about 2 minutes.
I have never had the sweet potato-marshmallow thing that people talk about OR the green bean casserole. True story.
I love cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Unfortunately, my mother really wants to host it at her house this year, and we’re not going to be around on Christmas, so I owe her a holiday.
<types out hugely long post about how much the last 2 Thanksgivings have sucked. Deletes>
Taomist, what do you mean when you say that you think there was something more to the story than that your dad was deer hunting?
Thanksgiving and Christmas are amazingly the only times my entire extended family can get together and be nice and friendly and have fun together. It’s the rest of the year we all hate each other.
I used to host Thanksgiving after my mom quit doing it and after a Thanksgiving “dinner” of hibachi Japanese, I decided “eff this, I want effing TURKEY and STUFFING for Thanksgiving.”
That worked out for a while, but it became a pain eventually. I was without holiday time the past two years and it’s hard to come home from work and clean your ass off every night till Thursday and then host 15 people for a day. And then clean it all up. Plus, and I’ve told this here before, but I have an annoying aunt who liked to act helpless and clueless because she was allowed to now that she was old. (Unfortunately, she fulfilled her own prophesy by actually becoming helpless and clueless since then, but that’s another story.)
Anyway, some of the things she would do while at my house for Thanksgiving:
[ul]
[li]snoop around upstairs (when she could navigate steps)[/li][li]glance at me from across a crowded kitchen and remark on how much weight I’d gained, and ask me to lift my shirt up so she could see my belly[/li][li]run her fingers along a piece of the oven I’d neglected to clean, asking, “doesn’t this come off?.. why yes, it does.” (Note: this aunt formerly lived in a mixed state of hoarding and squalor, but wasn’t as bad as any of those you see on TV - just enough that when her landline died, rather than call someone out to repair it, she just switched to a cell phone which she never charges)[/li][li]bring a huge mac ‘n’ cheese thing she’d gotten from the store that needed 40 minutes to cook… while everything else was already ready to eat[/li][li]literally the instant we sat down to eat, she gets up and putters around the kitchen because she suddenly decides she wants coffee now, with her dinner, and can’t find the coffee, the filters, or work the damn coffee machine. I ignored her for about 15 minutes but she JUST WOULDN’T SIT BACK DOWN so I had to leave my plate and fix her damn coffee. Every year after that, I made sure to have coffee ready for her. She NEVER EVER drank any again.[/li][/ul]
This year, none of us is having Thanksgiving together. Mister V and I will make our own small Thanksgiving by ourselves.
This year I’m spending it with some friends and some strangers. There are a few rules. The only ones I can remember are 1) No football, and 2) No relatives. But one guest might be bringing her aunt, who apparently 1) is the nicest person in the world, and 2) talks incessantly.
My Great Grandma was a cook for a large fraternal club. I believe it was the Eagles but it could have been the Moose or something. Because of this all our family recipes are scaled for a commercial kitchen. We don’t do stuffing, we do dressing, and the recipe will fill a 6 inch deep commercial kitchen pan. It takes four pounds of country sausage. I love it so much I could eat just turkey, dressing and gravy for Thanksgiving and be happy.
A couple of years ago we in the Bay Area wanted to give our old car to our daughter and her husband who live in NJ. It was late in the year, so we decided to do it over Thanksgiving week. We drove the car to St. Louis - perfect weather. They flew in from NJ. We rented Marriott suites hotel room, with two stories and a full kitchen. She froze a complete Thanksgiving dinner, packed it into a suitcase, and flew it to St. Louis. (It so got opened by TSA.) They arrive Wednesday evening, took everything out to defrost, and we had an excellent Thanksgiving dinner. The put the leftovers in a cooler we brought with us, and on Friday they drove to the airport and departed for home.
One Thanksgiving when I was in my teens, I was dreading the family get-together because I was trying to hide a couple of hickeys. I kept my collar turned up all day, and felt I had gotten away with it until we sat down to dinner and my Uncle David wound up the blessing with, “And dear Lord, please heal Julie’s neck…” :o
Also, I am famous for contributing this to the family meal one year: Circus Peanut Gelatin. I saw the recipe and it was so nasty I couldn’t resist.
The next year I brought a cat litter cake. Ever since, whatever I bring to Thanksgiving dinner is approached with utmost caution.
I actually do not know, but will have to ask him. He’s begun talking to me like an adult now; only took 47 years!
But you know how parents can tell when kids are lying? Yeah…kids can tell when parents are lying, too. And they’ve told other fibs along the way, for good reasons, (Like…“We got married on your mom’s birthday!” when in reality they didn’t get married until the 4th kid was born) but still, you can tell when something’s not being said. I don’t think he was cheating or anything, but I suspect the hunting trip may have been more an excuse to sit in the woods and drink beer or something; all I know is my mom was PISSED that she had to drive herself 50 miles to the hospital; I was her first kid, her water had already broken, and apparantly I was crowning as she pulled up to the door. She is a fast birther
Back in about 1983 I was deployed to Japan as the number two guy with a team of Seabees. As Thanksgiving approached, I though it would be a nice thing to prepare a traditional dinner instead of eating in the chow hall. Being unable to cook in the barracks, I opted to do it in our warehouse instead. So we managed, in good Seabee tradition, to steal a stove from the local base housing people, and a kettle barbecue from behind the officers’ quarters.
I made the mistake of thinking it wouldn’t be a problem to pick up a turkey at the commissary the day before, and was shocked to find none in evidence when my buddy and I went to pick one up, along with a ham on that Wednesday. The ham was no problem, but. . .no birds. It was too late to cancel, so we raced back to the office and looked in the military base directory for the Yokota AFB commissary. Yep, they had plenty, but they were closing at 2:00 pm. My watch said it was about 11:00.
If you’ve ever driven anywhere in the Tokyo region, and by “anywhere” I mean within about 50 miles, traffic is horrendous. The distance between the two bases is only about 40 miles IIRC, but it always took at least two hours to get there. We jumped in the truck and took off, but within about five miles we were slowed to a crawl. We finally got to the Yokota main gate at about 1:45 and slid into the commissary parking lot at five to two. Success!
The warehouse was drafty (and smoky after I got done), but the meal came out great and everybody seemed to enjoy it. I made the mistake of making sure everybody else got served first and ended up with no meat on my plate, but the taters and gravy were sure good.
I feel your pain. My orthodontist chose the day before Thanksgiving to do a major adjustment of my braces. I couldn’t chew a damn thing.
On the brighter side, one of the best pies I’ve ever eaten was at Thanksgiving a couple of years ago. It was a double-crust blueberry-apple pie made with wild blueberries, sugar on the top crust, and much enthusiasm.
A couple of years ago I had a medical procedure the day before Thanksgiving. My sister came to stay with me. On Thanksgiving, we were up for eating but not for cooking, and the only place open nearby was IHOP.
It so happened that I had a favorite IHOP waiter, whom I’d wanted my sister to experience. He was fabulously flaming, along with being a great waiter and very funny. He was not happy about being forced to work on Thanksgiving, but Sis and I got his full attention since we were the only customers in the restaurant at the time. (IHOP is traditionally open on T-day, but has no special menu for the day . . . and then refuses to accept the 2-for-1 coupons because it’s a holiday.)
We overheard our waiter excitedly telling a coworker that someone had left him a $20 tip earlier in the day. So Sis and I left him a $20 as well.
Fabulous Waiter disappeared from IHOP shortly thereafter. I hope he’s doing well wherever he’s gone. He turned a pretty yukky holiday into a fun experience for me.
The year after high school, my oldest son worked at Jack in the Box, and he was scheduled as the team leader for Thanksgiving day. I told him that if he liked, I could bring in a turkey dinner for him.
When he said sure, I swung into action, ready to bring the whole spread. His younger brothers thought it was a cool idea and pitched in. At the expected time, the three of us trooped in with a whole turkey on a platter and everything else in casseroles in a couple of boxes.
He was pleased and touched. He especially liked being able to wave me to the back to set it up so that the rest of his crew could have some. There were more people in line than I would have expected for Thanksgiving, possibly because they were the only fast food place in town open. A couple of the folks in line tried to claim that we had to share with everyone.
We set things up and then scooted, to be out of the way. We had a second turkey at home for those of us not working.
