Exactly. Nobody in that family, AFAIK, has a job that requires presence on holidays.
I once lived a mile up the Kenai River from Cook Inlet in Alaska, and beluga whales swam past my house in the spring when the hooligans were running up the river.
That sounds nice. I wish my family could master that.
I concur. Many women love football (was that part of the misogyny?). And usually my baking Thanksgiving desserts starts on Wednesday and I get up early on The Day to cook the main meal and stay in the kitchen while everyone else gets to socialize until the dinner is served. After that, I don’t care who cleans up as long as it ain’t me. Most of the time it’s my daughter in law does it because she loves to clean but sometimes Mrs Cad and I tag-team it.
Crime-fighting whales! What will they think of next?
I had to look it up; hooligan is a transmogrification of eulachon, aka candlefish or smelt. I always knew them as smelt but I’m calling them hooligans from now on.
Misogyny is never, you know, required. It’s merely traditional.
Yep, and the dogs wake me up at 6 am as usual and I’m still uncomfortably full.
Hehehe, the greatest horror of this Thanksgiving was due to 3 out of 5 cats DEMANDING turkey. Both when it was fresh, and every time we’ve returned for leftovers. We’ve lost an entire wing to one particularly poorly behaved giant orange bandit, but they’ve been mostly well behaved other than the literal caterwauling.
My family always used to visit the same family for Thanksgiving. And even as the matriarch and patriarch got old and passed on, one of their daughters and her husband took up the mantle and things seemed to be pretty set for the next few decades. But all that kind of fell apart, and now Thanksgiving just doesn’t feel like a very big deal anymore. I still went home for Thanksgiving this year, but it probably had more to do with the fact that my employer gives us that day and the next off, meaning I only had to burn three vacation days to get the whole week.
I’m done with Thanksgiving 2024; almost all the food has been et (or frozen for later feasting - Saturday is another day of cooking - smoked turkey jambalaya!). There’s still some smoked provolone left but cheese lasts for longer than a week. The smoker racks have been cleaned up & put away, & if the smoker wasn’t I’ll do that tomorrow when I’m back where it is tomorrow.
Only 51 weeks until we do it all over again!
I’m finishing up the turkey soup, which will be tomorrow’s supper (and the leftovers frozen) but other than that we are done with Thanksgiving 2024.
I got 4 turkey skeletal remnants from my MiL - I’ve rendered down one, and will do the other 3 over the next three months. The resulting stock will probably last through the beginning of summer.
So Thanksgiving will linger on for quite a while by that standard!
Is it everyone else’s experience that dogs lose their ever-loving mind over turkey? Every dog we have owned over the last 30 years goes insane when turkey. Our new rescue Biscuit is 15 and when fed will wander around a bit and check in on the other dogs before maybe having a few bites. Put turkey in her bowl and she is muzzle deep chowing down - move quickly or you’ll lose fingers. And that is like every dog I’ve ever known.
Tonight I’m cooking a turkey and the dogs will be, “Aww shit! It’s turkey night tonight.” and will stake out the kitchen thinking. “If I had opposable thumbs on my paws, I’d open that oven and that turkey would be so eaten by now.”
“Sons o’ bitches! Bumpuses!”
Naw, it was yummy people food but no more begging than any other people food.
Cite: I carved about 12lbs of turkey meat into bite sized pieces for jambalaya; let’s just say they were happy.
I’ve done three turkeys and a chicken. The stock has had the fat skimmed and saved seperately, it can give extra turkeyness to a roux when making gravy. My grandmother’s genes for not wasting anything are coming out.
Nothing wrong with making the most of the bird. But since I’m the only one who will use the stock in my house (just the wife and I, and she’s vegetarian) I use it reasonably slowly. 
Well… that’s not completely true. I’ll make a big batch for the cats (salt, onion, and seasoning free) for their Xmas enjoyment - extra concentrated and used as a kibble topper for the whole week of X-Mas through New Years.
I never thought of that! I do sometimes buy those grocery store chickens and save the bones for stock, I think I’ll try that for my Atilla. He’s 17-1/2 and I want him to have all the pleasure he can. Although the dog will be jealous.
Anything for our feline overlords!
–carefully does NOT look over his shoulder–