*By the way, what kind of patriarchal bullshit is this? The old “Dad has to carve the turkey. He did almost nothing while the ‘wimminfolk’ cooked, but he’s the alpha male of the tribe, so he gets the big sharp knife.” (That was my father’s only job, and his father’s…)
I’m the dad and the oldest, but I resent everyone assuming I’ll carve, but how can I refuse without making a scene and using the terms patriarchal, sexist, or fucked?
And if I ask my son to do it, that’ll just look like passing it on to the next leader of the clan. My wife wouldn’t do it, she’d assume I’m just getting out of a task, my daughter might understand, but she’d roll her eyes.
Can I ask a guest?
We’ve hosted Thanksgiving at our house for a number of years now (though as I said before, not this year, fuck it we’re just eating whatever we want, give thanks for that). And so it has fallen on me most of those years.
I don’t really like turkey. I’ll eat a slice to be polite but ugh. It’s like eating chicken breast that somehow has even less flavor. It’s good with gravy on it, but a paper bag is also delicious with gravy on it.
So I have to carve the turkey because yeah, I’m the “man of the house”. I never know what I’m doing and as I carve it people are correcting how thick I should cut it and stuff. I’m like, come on, someone else do this. But like you, I don’t want to make a scene.
This year none of that matters. I’m really looking forward to Thursday!
I had no idea this was a thing. I figured whoever makes it, carves it. The one time I made turkey for Thanksgiving I was happy to carve it. I even got a special carving knife.
Yeah, my wife usually makes the turkey, she should carve it. She’d be ten times better at it than me. And I’m sure she’d prefer doing so herself.
We normally have older people over like her parents, aunt and uncle, her grandmother. My mom is here half the time too. And they’d probably get all judgmental. That’s why just having the three of us this year feels like so much less of a burden. This is the most relaxed Thanksgiving I can remember in a decade.
LOL, the first thing I say… “Uh, is this a good knife for the turkey?”
I’m a pretty competent cook, in fact I fix dinner in our house maybe 90% of the time, but butchering a giant bird is not in my wheelhouse.
For my dad, it was quite funny for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners when he’d carve the cooked critter. The backstory is great. When Mom and Dad began dating in high school. They were both real city slickers. But Dad did have a cousin who had a bird farm just past the ‘burbs. Mom and Dad were sitting on a fence watching some ducks go by, when a big ol’ turkey decided to leisurely cross the meadow. Dad said, “Let me show you how to handle these” and walked up to the turkey and petted it behind the base of the neck. Now, the cousin was only raising two kinds of birds on his farm: ducks and chickens; Dad didn’t know that jive turkey wasn’t part of the establishment. That turkey my parents encountered was a wild turkey. The thing chased Dad around the meadow for a good 15 minutes or so, according to Mom. She thought it was hilarious. So, every Thanksgiving and Christmas, Dad picks up the knife and fork for carving the turkey, loudly says, “Hah!” and cuts into it.
When I was a kid we always journeyed to grandparents’ place for T-day. Old Grand-dad was a character and despite being a devout heathen as were we all, he would deliver an impromptu eulogy & sermon for that dear bird which had so unselfishly given its all for our meal. And we should be thankful for that sacrifice above all other things this day. His wife, my GM, would always sigh loudly and roll her eyes.
Jeebus christ woman! That’s not a mini-rant, that’s a full blown crisis. Here’s hoping this resolves well for you both. We’re all here if you need to rant (or cry) in this thread or a dedicated one.
Make a scene! I did it at the Thanksgiving potluck at work today, and it was fun!
Some background: at my company, setup/organization/cleanup of the potluck was ‘traditionally’ left to the women. Thus, the women were put at the front of the line, whether they had helped or not. (Making all the ladies go through line first also tends to result in them all sitting together at one or two tables.) As a woman who thinks this division of labor is complete and utter bullshit, I’ve always happily taken my place at the back of the line. For some reason, this annoys the hell out of certain people. I don’t consider it an honor to plate my food while the younger guys make comments about how much food the ladies are taking, and I like being able to pick my dining companions instead of being forced to sit with people.
So at lunch today, when people started yelling at me to move to the front of the line, I refused. The yelling intensified to the point that the people around me were even yelling back.
I need a new ad blocker. The one I’ve been using has been working gangbusters at Twitter, but for the last day or so every other post is an ad - the same ones over and over and over. If I can’t find a new decent ad blocker that works on that shit, I think I’ll be done with Twitter. I threatened the same after my last two bannings over there, but I’m really starting to hate Elon Musk.
Well, we’re two, but still impractical. Over the past decade or so we’ve gone from a turkey, to a turkey breast, to a turkey tenderloin, to turkey cutlets as the gathering dwindled.
I still miss the sandwiches of leftover genuine roasted turkey, but I’ve got to admit a few cutlets are much easier and quicker to cook.
We went to Walmart for the first part of the Thanksgiving list. We can never get this done in one run. I don’t understand why.
No self checkout available. Lines were long. Everyone was coughing. Ivy was in a mood. I took a runner. I handed her the card and left and sat in the car being pissed cause my bad Taco.
Then the storm hit. It was raining hard. I felt bad cause Ivy was stuck with the buggy and groceries and I couldn’t get her to respond on the phone. I was gonna tell her wait under the thingy and I’d bring the umbrella. Nope.
She waited anyway. Til she thought it was raining less. The woman walks so slow she got drowned.
I looked forward to a sloooooow drive home. Yep.
But we got here. Figured out what we didn’t get. Determined another trip was gonna be necessary.
I’m thinking I need to just quit being involved in these things.
I did have a giggle on the ride home. I won’t tell it. It’s too mean.
We’re going out for T-day because while I LOVE a traditional T-day feast, I don’t love to cook. And there’s just the two of us. I’m contemplating ordering a 3rd plate just so I can have leftovers.
Reading your post, I can somehow envision Mary Steenburgen (in “My Summer Story”) standing up in defiance / frustration in the movie theater… and whipping a gravy boat at Leopold Doppler’s head.
)