I’m taking my elderly mother (who is getting dementia) and my mentally ill 50-something 300 lb. brother out to a restaurant (buffet) as I have for the past 5 years. This involves a lot of driving to pick each one up, get them in the car, driving to the place, driving them back to mom’s (she’s hoping he can stay overnight at the old house), and driving HIM back to his place the day after Thanksgiving. It all depends on whether he brought his meds. If not, we will have to sit there and “visit” for hours until I drive him back to his place around 10 p.m…Husband has begged to stay home (permission granted!), daughter might have to work that day, so it’s just we happy three… I might cook husband a turkey the day before or the day after Thanksgiving if he wants one, but he’s the only one who will eat it…Oh, and I’m looking forward to a call later from my other brother wishing us a happy Turkey Day, to ask “how did it go?” This is the brother who lives with his big lovely family down in Florida. They go to Vegas, or Disney World, or simply bag it and head down to the beach with a dozen jolly neighbors and put on a clambake, with a ton of lobsters. “Because (chortle) the Pilgrims had lobsters at their first Thanksgiving, didn’t they?”. Bastard.
Hallgirl1 usually works Thanksgiving (time and half all day!), and in the evenings, they may cut over to her boyfriend’s family. Even though I was invited, I decided to forgo the long drive and food nightmares. Hallboy is doing his traditional Thanksgiving Day dinner at his friend’s house, as he’s done every year since…well, I can’t remember when he hasn’t. Since it’s his last, it’s important to him to be there. We’ll all come together on Saturday and have our “traditional” Thanksgiving dinnner. For some bizarre reason, I bought a 25# turkey this year. I have no idea what I was thinking. It’s way too big for 4 people.
Actually, on Thankgiving Day, my mom and I are driving to DC to go to the Museum of American History. They have an exhibit I want to see (oddly enough, it’s called Food). I’m actually looking forward to it.
This Thanksgiving I will be cooking a turkey breast on our smoker grill, and Mrs. Evil Captor will be making all the sides and trimmings, our usual division of labor at such times (she is an expert cook, I have over several years learned to grill and smoke foods).
I’m the only one in the family who makes pies, so that’s my contribution - 2 pumpkin and 1 custard this time. If there were more people, I’d make more pies, but the crowd is smaller this year. Plus I’m pretty sure someone else will bring desserts.
I don’t want to, I have no plans to, but it’s at my house and I know I’m going to have to run my ass off all day. AND we won’t get to try any of the awesome turkey cooking methods like frying or rotisserie grilling or smoking. It’ll be regular roast turkey, probably dry, with green bean casserole and Mac and cheese and someone who means well but is a terrible cook will bring disgusting slimy thrown together garbage stuffing with fruit and meat and too many spices that don’t go together because “Stovetop isn’t homemade!!!” There will probably be some of that weird half-and-half and jello and raw cranberries semi-frozen (but always too hard and cold to actually eat) thing, too. Oh yeah, and the dishes. You can’t eat thanksgiving on paper plates, and since I’m “not cooking” I’ll have to run at least a dozen loads of dishes through the dishwasher from the wee small hours of the morning until after my bedtime, all while there are people in my bubble. Then the girls will go out and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on ugly crap we don’t need because IT’S ON SALE!!! Then Friday morning I’ll get up at 5am and go to work, completely exhausted and badly needing a day off to recover from my “day off.”
I used to love thanksgiving. I have a lot to give thanks for, but I wish I could just eat Italian beef sandwiches and drink a few beers and watch football alone.
Oh yeah, and I can almost guarantee some well meaning person will see my paused Green Bay game is “crashed” while I’m out of the room being worked to death and determine they should try to figure out how to set it to Christmas music and when I get back I will have to figure out how to fix the date and recover the sound and change the menu language back to English from Japanese or Dagomba or Braille or something, all while I have one person nagging me about Christmas music and another person nagging me about the game and someone else nagging me about more dishes and a fourth person trying to find Tupperware and a fifth person asking if there is a 24 hour pharmacy nearby, etc etc etc.
My brother-in-law just texted me this morning begging me to make these sausage appetizers he loves so much, so I guess I gotta add those to the list too.
I’m working on Thanksgiving and my family lives on the other side of the country so I’m doing a mini-Thanksgiving for myself on Wednesday with just my favorite bits of the traditional meal. So far I’m up to dressing, gravy, cinnamon apples and pumpkin pie. I absolutely must have the pie. Family tradition is pumpkin pie for breakfast on Thanksgiving.
I voted “I’m contributing something else (wine, other drinks, rolls, snacks, …).”
My wife and I are having her brother and his family (wife, son, daughter - the latter two both in college now) to our home for T’giving. Our three young sons will be here with us, too. My wife will do most of the cooking, as she usually does, and I’ll help out in the kitchen where I can, under her expert direction.
That sounds like a fun tradition!
I just have to pick up my mom and dad from their retirement home, and drive over to my brother’s house, a long with a couple bottles of wine. I also have to drive them back but at least it’ll still be early in the day. Oh, and I’m bringing over a turkey breast that my brother will deep fry for me to take home.
I chose “everything” in the sense that the entire meal will be prepared at my house. It will just be the four of us: me, my husband and our kids. My husband will do most of the cooking. I’ll help, do the clean up, and make dessert.
It’s just me and hubby, and neither of us enjoys cooking, so we eat out. Quite a few restaurants in our area are open Thursday and serving up Thanksgiving dinners in addition their regular menus. Only problem with this is we don’t have left over turkey to take home for sandwiches and our cats.
My brother and sister-in-law get a free heritage turkey every year from their condo board but since she’s Jain they usually turn it down. Not this year! They were making the turkey delivery right when we were there this weekend and said we’d take it off their hands.
So my husband and I will be bringing a brined turkey ready to pop in the oven. I might also make my triple cranberry sauce off of Epicurious because I don’t think Stuff in a Can compares. Otherwise, most of the work will be done by my sister and brother-in-law, who are hosting. I’m too busy to really contribute this year as we are having 2 solid days of parties after Thanksgiving related to other stuff.
Just me and my husband this Thanksgiving. We’re going to McDonald’s and the bar. We did last year the same way. We like it better than the whole family thing.