“I hates meeces to pieces!"
It’s usually fine if there’s enough gravy on it. 
Truly, gravy would be the one thing I would be/have been disappointed if it weren’t part of the feast.
I have shared before and will mention again that I once went to someone’s Thanksgiving dinner, where I had to brave literal falling boulders and a tremendous rain storm to attend. I could forgive the boxed mashed potatoes and dressing. I could forgive the disgracefully over-dry turkey and vegetables cooked to mush. But there was no gravy. None! Not a drip or a drop! Not even jarred or from a package!
I’ve never gone to anyone else’s Thanksgiving celebration since.
What a horror!
But do not be dismissive of locally made jarred turkey gravy. The stuff I’m talking about is truly amazing and addictive. I don’t know what they put in it. Maybe heroin!
It’s a fairly large jar and only keeps for a few days after being opened, which is why I’ve taken to freezing tiny single-use portions. It works with roast chicken, too, and is great for dipping fries.
Forgive me. I wasn’t being dismissive of it. I would have been grateful for it at the dinner I attended, believe me!
My own homemade Thanksgiving gravy is a 3-day process. And worth it, if I do say so myself. 
I freeze leftovers, too, and if I could, I’d jar it for future use.
Come to my place; my smoked turkey doesn’t need any gravy.
Ohh… I’m sure it’s delightful. However, my parents were very early proponents of Weber kettle grill smoked turkeys. They did smoked turkeys all year long, not just at Thanksgiving. No argument they’re delicious. But when one is made to eat too much smoked turkey all year long, it gets a bit old. All through the early 70s, I ate way too much smoked turkey to ever crave it again. I appreciate your point, though.
I love this idea! The closest I came to this was during the shutdown, when I wasn’t able to buy my usual turkey. I was able to get my hands on a farm-raised duck…that was a nice treat.
I think I ate too much Stovetop stuffing as a kid…I like a bite or two for nostalgia, but meal after meal of it is too much.
Ever since I found out there are other ways to cook turkey besides popping it in the oven for hours, the turkey has been my favorite part! I’m with you on the mashed potatoes though, especially if they’re Yukon Gold.
Yukon Gold are literally my favorite potatoes. I love them so much.
My mother wants me and Mrs. H to join her and the family for a show, and I simply want no part of it. AITA?
Mom & the rest of the family live in/around Springfield, Illinois, about two hours north and east of St. Louis. Mrs. H and I live in Nowhere, Missouri, about two hours south and west of the city. So The Lou is a sort of de facto meeting point for us to get together every now and then, like for lunch at one of the city’s Italian restaurants. Now she wants the family to all get together and watch a matinee of Les Miz at the city’s big, old, grand theater on a Sunday afternoon. I decline, and Mom is being a pill about it.
I do not want to drive two hours, then watch a show for three hours, possibly have a late supper, and then drive two hours back, getting home well after dark and probably approaching bedtime, on a Sunday afternoon/evening. Four (total) hours on the road, three hours in an uncomfortable chair in a theater, getting home well after dark on a winter’s night, and then having to be at work the next morning would absolutely wreck me. Mom says I’m being a baby and I should suck it up for being with the family.
AITA?
Why don’t they come visit you if they want to see you so bad?
My brother and sister both live in the St Louis area. I’m 40 miles west of KC. When’s the last time either of them came out to visit me? Close to 15 years ago. And yet my wife and I are expected to schlep our asses across the state twice a year to visit them. I finally said fuck it, if they want to see me they can come and see me.
Sigh, knew the Semantic Nitpicker’s Chapter of the Straight Dope Message Board would be along very shortly to bestow their august wisdom on us all. Tell you what, next time I decide to make a poll I’ll sit on it for several decades first, going over and over and over in my head every possible permutation of how I could phrase the question in such a way that it could not possibly ever be misinterpreted. Will that make you happy? 
I love Martha Stewart’s turkey technique:
-
Cover the bird with layers of cheesecloth that you’ve soaked in white wine and melted butter.
-
Continually pour more butter and wine over the turkey throughout the day (house will smell delicious).
-
Yes, this necessitates opening bottle after bottle of wine.
-
Don’t worry if only half of each bottle makes it to the bird…
BUT I’ll admit that I eat very little turkey at Thanksgiving. My plate is so full of apple/raisin/walnut stuffing, sweet potato casserole with gravy, garlic green beans, rosemary red potatoes, Jell-O, cranberry compote, cranberry-orange sauce, cranberry chutney, and cranberry-from-the-can… that there’s just no room for poultry!
I have a propane turkey “air fryer,” which I love. Not only does it crisp up the skin nicely, but it also collects the rendered fat for gravy.
Mmmm… gravy.
My parents used to make boiled shrimp or shrimp and grits for Thanksgiving. Now I go to Waffle House. I hate traditional Thanksgiving dishes so that suits me fine.
.
SAAAAAME. Also, I’m going to be disappointed if there’s no stuffing, but I draw the line at removing mashed potatoes from Thanksgiving.
So I didn’t mention this earlier, but last week was the final push to get in state quarterly, semi-annual and annual reports. Despite texting her repeatedly regarding the urgency of the matter, Always Late got me the stuff I requested at 4:30pm the day of the deadline, so I had to work until 9pm to get stuff in on time. She didn’t even get all her own reports in on time.
I was PISSED. I angry-texted my boss. So my boss talked to her today, and apparently her response is, “Well, it doesn’t reflect badly on Spice when I turn them in late, only me. Also, we have a six-day grace period to get them in after the date they say we have to get them in.”
First of all, it DOES reflect badly on me because I have the assigned role of Project Director as far as the government entity is concerned. That means it’s my job to coordinate all these details and get shit done.
Second of all, that “grace period” should be used in cases of emergency or not at all. It’s not free license to regularly turn in reports late when I told you they were due two weeks ago and you’ve been doing this for three years so NONE OF THIS is a fucking surprise!
Right now the state is all friendly with us, but the minute the Trump administration reaches its tenacles in, they’ll be looking for reasons not to fund people. You know where I’d start? “Continually fails to meet a clearly broadcast regular fucking deadline.”
I’m so mad about this. It’s one thing to be scattered and another thing entirely to make a bunch of fucking excuses for why you’re going to continue to turn shit in late.
Last year, or maybe it was the year before, my wife specified that I get Yukon Gold potatoes for the mashed potatoes because the Internet told her they were better than Russet. She told me later “Yeah, don’t buy those again. The Internet was wrong.” 
They’re so fluffy! I’m also a fan of those colorful little potatoes (often sold in small bags); they’re perfect for quick roasting.
I love Yukon Golds!
I have a whine more than a rant. This has been such a crappy few weeks.
-- I was supposed to go on a trip with a friend but had to bail on it because my husband wasn’t feeling well. It’s as well I didn’t go because he had a serious bout of vertigo/delirium that was really scary. He’s fine now and nothing conclusive found … but that episode lurks in my brain.
– Next week he has to take an exam to keep his certification. If he doesn’t pass he may be out of a job. He is not and never has been a good test-taker. That though is also occupying my brain.
– At my work there has been a heart-wrenching dilemma with a coworker who is having some serious physical challenges, but who is ultimately of real value at work and lives for their job. I (as their supervisor) had to send them home the other day and it was touch-and-go as to whether they’d be back. I think they will be, but I don’t yet know under what capacity. I’ve worked with them for many years and they essentially trained me. This incident is taking up another corner of my brain and is wallowing in a guilt puddle like a giant sow.
– Last night (after I’d spent my day doing damn-all and had had the time to see to an emergency), one of my cats was on the kitchen floor yowling and quivering, and stinking of anal glands. As he’s a young male we scooped him up to go to the emergency clinic. As I suspected, he has a urinary blockage. I think he’ll be fine because we caught it pretty quickly, but the initial exam is a flat $200, and I had to put down a deposit for his stay and care … $2600. It may end up that I get a little refund, but I’m guessing there will be more added to that. 
Please can something good happen that doesn’t end up costing me an arm and a leg??
Sounds like a lot of work. My turkey technique is to place the bird in the roasting pan breast side down, so all that delicious fat from the back seeps through the breast meat, courtesy of our friend Mr. Gravity. About half an hour before it’s finished, I flip the turkey back over, so the breast can brown properly. It’s a messy but necessary step, and the resultant moist through and through bird is SO worth it.
I brine the bird for twenty-four hours. Afterwards, I pat it dry with a lot of paper towels, then put it in the roasting pan in the fridge for twelve to twenty-four hours, so the skin is nice and dry. Finally, into the air fryer it goes for about two hours (depending on its weight, of course).
Does anyone else use the neck and giblets to make a stock for gravy?