I like the traditional turkey/stuffing/cranberry sauce/etc. dinner well enough - I don’t stuff myself, I just eat normal portions as I would on any other day of the year…but to me it’s all about the company, if I’m with good friends and they want to serve something untraditional that’s 100% fine with me.
I only get excited about Thanksgiving cuisine prepared by my family members.
But I wouldn’t be all that thrilled about eating some random generic Thanksgiving dinner. I would expect the turkey to be too dry. And there would probably would be green bean casserole instead of collards, mashed potatoes instead of baked macaroni and cheese, pumpkin pie instead of sweet potato. And none of the dishes would have enough seasoning for my liking.
No, I like Thanksgiving food, but it’s sort of how I cook regularly, so it’s not really special. I think of Thanksgiving dinner as a celebration of all the “Middle American” favorites at once, seasonal and traditional–not a celebration of the unique or gourmet or exotic. I leave that for Christmas 
This is from someone who loves to cook all kinds of things, yet I could happily eat “taters and gravy” every day.
I loathe turkey. Nobody I know really likes turkey. All the dancing and prancing and angst over how to cook the thing and coddle it and make it edible! I do think sticking it in a baking bag, heavily salted and peppered, makes it at least juicy. But that cold gray gamey carcass sitting in the refrigerator for days? Ick! Love all the side dishes, though. I would rather have a nice spiral ham, but mashed potatoes and gravy don’t seem to go with it.
I’ve always preferred chicken over turkey. I find turkey almost laborious to eat. I’m not overly fond of pumpkin pie, either.
I am the exact same way. I could eat chicken every night, but I could take or leave turkey. It’s not that I hate it, and I enjoy a leftover sandwich more than the actual meal. As far as the sides, the mashed potatoes which I love are no big deal because I have them very often throughout the year. I like sweet potatoes which I should eat more often, and my SIL who does dinner every year has a recipe I really enjoy. The same with stuffing, I’m not a fan, but I really like the way she does it. I can eat pumpkin pie but it would never be one of my top choices.
I’m a vegetarian, but I am crazy for pumpkin, so bring pie. If I’m invited to T-day dinner, I always ask the person if they would mind making a separate stuffing casserole outside of the bird, and offer to bring my sweet potato/red potato/cranberry casserole, which always goes over well.
Anything prepared badly can be blah.
Part of being a properly socialized adult is to be able to eat things you don’t like, at least to the extent that people around you don’t notice that you’re refusing to eat a lot of things.
I’d say part of being a properly socialized adult is not deriding others for not eating the same things you eat. The deriders are the ones being rude in that case, IMO. As long as the person abstaining doesn’t ask for special treatment (not even in a passive-agressive-not-stated-as-a-question-way), they aren’t doing anything wrong.
I guess I’m one of the only ones here who loves the bird the most of all. Done right, it is fucking delicious. I don’t get the comments about it being bland. Chicken is bland. Turkey is not. It’s also pretty much the only time in a year I eat turkey, because I like to roast it whole. And I like it roasted. Not in a bag. Not smoked. Not deep fried (Well, actually, I guess I don’t mind deep fried too much. I just don’t like turkey with flabby skin, or smoked turkey, for some reason, as I otherwise love smoked foods.) Give it to me roasted or grilled, with crispy skin, some gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberries, and I’m in heaven. Not a huge fan of stuffing, but I’ll deal with it. We never did the green bean casserole thing, so that’s out, too. Oh, and pumpkin or sweet potato pie to finish. Pumpkin/sweet potato pie is by far my favorite pie.
That doesn’t contradict what I said. Sure, it may be rude to do that, but that’s on the guy that’s doing that. It doesn’t absolve the person who makes his tastes that noticeable.
#Sad. Thanksgiving meal is just about my favorite meal that there is. I’m truly sorry for you folks who don’t like it. I like pretty much all the traditional stuff (heh!), but honestly I’d be happy with just the bird.
I love turkey and all the accouterments with the sole exception of cranberries in any form. The rest is all golden.
It’s a thread about not liking Thanksgiving food, so please don’t pop in just to scold and threadshit, Acsenray.
That sounds like an amazing piece of advice!
The only part of the traditional Thanksgiving meal I really love is pumpkin pie.
I don’t care for cranberries or the sauced ones. I don’t eat sweet potatoes or yams. I don’t like those casseroles of green beans and those canned fried onion bits. And I’ve never eaten pumpkin pie. Is this what the OP is looking for?
Beware, if you are roasting a large turkey, turning it is very hard. I turn every other bird I roast. (I start with a hot oven with one side up, flip it to brown the other side, then reduce the heat and finish in a low oven breast up) But I’ve given up flipping turkey. The only real problem is that the skin on the bottom end up soggy, not crisp and delicious, like the rest of the skin.
My wife and I LOVE Thanksgiving food, but the Firebug doesn’t like any of it. Not the turkey, not the stuffing, not even the cranberry sauce or candied yams or any of the other side dishes that converge on dessert. (He likes the actual desserts, the apple pie and pumpkin pie, but that’s it.)
There are a number of people in the thread who’ve said they don’t like pumpkin pie.
I happen to love pumpkin pie - I bake them frequently during the cold part of the year - but if all you’ve ever had is store-bought pumpkin pies, I’ll say this in your defense: pumpkin pies from the grocery store are almost always crap. You may or may not like pumpkin pie, because disliking crap that calls itself pumpkin pie - a natural reaction - doesn’t determine whether you like pumpkin pie.
The irritating thing is, making a pretty good pumpkin pie is really easy.
- Check to see that you’ve got sugar, salt, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and at least 2 eggs at home.
- Go to the store. Buy a deep-dish graham cracker crust, a can of Libby’s pumpkin, and a can of evaporated milk. (And anything you’re missing from step 0.)
- Follow the instructions on the Libby’s can, which amount to mixing the ingredients, pouring them into the pie shell, and baking for most of an hour. Not rocket science.
If you bake that pie and don’t like it, then you really don’t like pumpkin pie. Send the rest to me, I’ll eat it.
I bake that pie every year. Except my husband makes a home made crust, which I will enjoy on the apple and apple/cranberry pies we will also make. All my relatives who like pumpkin pie like the pie I make. But I don’t like it.
I don’t hate pumpkin pie. I’ll eat it if I’m hungry and that’s what’s served. And frankly, my pumpkin pie is better than most store bought apple pies, which often taste like corn starch goo. But give me a good fruit pie (apple, blueberry, cherry, blackberry, apple/cranberry, apple/currant) over any of the custard or sugar pies any day.