Thanksgiving Horror Stories?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So, yesterday’s Thanksgiving went beautifully, but does anyone have any fun/amusing Thanksgiving “horror” stories? I had a doozy last year. Last year was our first year in our new house and I decided to host Thanksgiving for the first time in my life. We invited 6 people (dad, stepmother, friends Paul, Lori, their daughter Mary and their Uncle Charley).

  1. Tragedy 1. My husband Jason and I had originally been building a different house the year before. We had ordered some dining room furniture for the new house, but Jason unexpectedly lost his job and we lost the house. We had the dining room furniture delivered to our condo, but we had no room for it, so it was stored in the garage. Fast forward to Thanksgiving in our new house - Jason goes to put the table together, surprise - missing a key piece for stability. The furniture has been discontinued, so we were screwed*. I had this dream of a gorgeous dining room with a table cloth and china, but we ended up crowding everyone around the kitchen table.

  2. Tragedy 2. Around 10:00 am, Thanksgiving Day, my dad and I are sitting at the breakfast bar and I noticed the oven clock wasn’t on. That was weird. Turned out the sensor panel for our oven had burned out (the thing that sets the oven temperature). On Thanksgiving Day. With 6 people invited for dinner. Of course, nothing is open. We couldn’t get it fixed or even buy a replacement. The stove top was gas and operated by knobs, so it worked. Paul discovered that the bottom drawer of the oven was actually a “warming oven” that was controlled by a turn-y knob (not the oven touch controls) and went up to 450 degrees. We cooked every damned thing in the warming oven - luckily we were making turkey wellingtons (shaped like footballs) so they fit beautifully. Pies, casseroles, turkey, rolls…all in the tiny drawer in the bottom of the oven (honestly, I had never used it for anything but storing baking pans).

The oven was covered by our home warranty and we got it fixed a few weeks later.

  • Right before my baby shower a couple of weeks ago (NEARLY ONE YEAR LATER), we finally got the table fixed. Jason commissioned a cabinet maker to replicate the missing piece. We stained it (it’s close, but it’s under the table so no one can really see it), and Jason (who is SUPER handy) installed it. Yay!
2

When I was around 6 or 7 we spent Thanksgiving at my aunt’s. My mother warned by brother, around 5 at the time, to tie his loose shoelace before going downstairs.

Needless to say, he didn’t listen. :smack:

Fell down the stairs into a corner of the entrance wall and hit the corner of the wall…Cracked his head right open.

I didn’t see him too much since they rushed us little kids into a different room. I remember seeing all of my relatives covered in his blood. I couldn’t believe how so much blood came out of him!

He had to go to the hospital and get three staples and about eight stitches to close the wound. I heard that they had to get a gigantic nurse in to hold him down just to administer the numbing shots (hyperactive kid + anger + fear = amazing superpower strength, I’ve learned over the years.)

He survived with no ill effects, save for the long scar on his head that became one of many to reflect his rambunctiousness over the years.

3

Ouch!

One year our dog got away and ended up caught in a (beaver?) trap. Going to the vet was not a fun way to spend the holiday. Our dog always seemed to get into accidents on major holidays.

Yesterday we had a very minor disaster. The friend that I stayed with cooked all night and all morning. Two dishes that she made were crab salad appetizers. Her idea was to line champagne glasses with lettuce and then fill them with the crab salad and top them with alphalfa sprouts.

When we got to our hosts’ home, we discovered that the (plastic) champagne glasses were the tops only – no bases. Apparently those were a separate purchase.

4

My grandmother was infamous for burning the rolls. Always.

Turns out it was hereditary; when Grandma passed away, my mom carried on the tradition.

5

Tangentially related: My sister and her husband bought their first house. They had it checked out very carefully and made sure it had no hidden surprises. They happily fell asleep (with their very young daughter) the first night there.

And all woke up very early the next morning. You see, while they’d checked out the house carefully, and knew that it was in a semi-rural area, they didn’t realize it was located next to a farm which started harvesting very early in the morning.

How’s this related? It was a cranberry farm.

6

A few years ago my wife was cooking Thanksgiving dinner when she dropped her chef’s knife. It fell point first through her shoe, her sock, her skin, her tendon, the bottom of her foot and the sole of her shoe.

We didn’t end up eating much.

7

When I was about 14, my parents decided to get the kitchen cabinets refinished in early November. The contractor and my father had a falling out, and so the contractor walked off the job. Come Thanksgiving, the kitchen was shrouded in dust and plastic sheeting, and was completely unusable, so we decided to go to a restaurant.

Only one restaurant in town was open (small town), so that’s where we went. Weeellll…I don’t remember the details, except that they didn’t completely defrost the turkey, so it was taking a really long time to cook. While we waited, they brought us rolls, but otherwise, my dad just kept filling up on mixed drinks. By the time the waiter brought our meal, about 2 1/2 hours had passed. My dad was trashed, and the turkey was nearly raw. It didn’t help that the waiter (and then the cook) tried to argue with us that the turkey was fully cooked.

The first time I hosted Thanksgiving for my in-laws, my parents lived 1200 miles away. My mom had always been the one to cook the turkey, so I called her for advice. I cooked a perfectly good turkey, however, I didn’t account for its weight. I never thought to ask her WHAT to cook the turkey IN.

Trying to remove it from the oven in the flimsy disposable aluminum pan (don’t ask, I have no excuse) resulted in grease spilling all over the oven. It didn’t take two minutes before the fire alarm started blaring. So we spent about 15 minutes opening windows to the icy cold air (it snowed) and trying desperately to clear the grease and smoke from the kitchen. The turkey came out perfectly, once we were able to actually sit down and enjoy it, and my in-laws never acted anything but helpful.

8

Funny you should ask…

When my daughter became vegetarian several years ago, I was able to include her in the Thanksgiving festivities by stuffing a pumpkin and baking it alongside the traditional turkey. The first one I made, I wanted a smallish globe, and I found a suitably-sized WHITE pumpkin in the supermarket. The kid raved and raved about it, saying the dark orange flesh was sweeter than “regular” pumpkin. I’ve tried to find a white one every T-day since. Some years I succeed, others I don’t.

I’d make a duplicate stuffing of what I planned to put into the carnivore-eaters’ bird, and then I’d add a few more goodies to make the vegetarian-eaters’ substitute special. Along with the typical sage seasoning, I would add a small amount of cinnamon, clove, and allspice. Then I’d include chopped dried fruits. The spices weren’t overpowering, since I’d put just enough so that the taster would get a squinty look on his or her face and say, “This is familiar, what IS it?” And then the person would go on to snarf a second or third helping!

Stuffing = bread cubes, to most people. I’ve always made mine with bread. Last year, though, our family was invited out to Thanksgiving Dinner and I wanted to bring something more diabetic-friendly than a bread stuffing. I made a special trip to the market to cruise the “low-carb” aisle, and picked up a couple of loaves of the expensive bread that is targeted to the Atkins groupies. I brought the breads home, cut the slices into cubes, and toasted them in the oven. Boy, they smelled good! The cubes looked like traditional stuffing mix bread cubes, too! Into the mixing bowl they went, along with all my other stuffing mandatories, and I stirred the mess together. A few minutes later, the pumpkin was baking, and the house was filled with Thanksgiving aromas.

I proudly presented my vegetarian stuffed pumpkin at the table of our hosts. (This was a friend-of-a-friend type situation, and I’d never even MET the people before this moment!)

Oh, dear God…

For something that LOOKED good and SMELLED good, my lovely stuffing was horrible. Imagine chewing on sage and onion flavored art gum erasers. I wanted to crawl under the table and stay there for the rest of the meal.

That was in 2004.

THIS year it was just Hubster and me, at our place in NE AZ. I have a BRAND NEW STOVE, and I was looking forward to making a wonderful T-Day meal. I bought a turkey breast, decided to roast it atop a medley of diced root veggies, and then I made a pan of dressing. on the side.

I bought a sack of seasoned bread cubes at our “nearby” market (30 miles away). They were store brand, located in the bakery department.

I assembled everything, and got my two ovens in my BRAND NEW STOVE busy!

The turkey boob was incredible. I had pulled back the skin, plastered on softened butter and sprinkled with poultry seasoning, and then put the skin back in place. The oven I used in my BRAND NEW STOVE is convection, and the thing was gorgeous and aromatic. The root veggies were sublime.

The dressing was completely inedible. It looked right, it smelled right, it tasted like shit. We figured the bread cubes were wonky, and the whole mess had a “chemical” taste.

In 38 years of marriage, I’ve only bombed the dressing TWICE. Not bad.
~VOW

9

11 years old, Thanksgiving morning. I have a dirt bike accident. 130 stitches in my head. A real bloody mess.

10

Well, there was the year when I was 10 or so, when for some reason, everyone wound up in the kitchen and the turkey was unguarded on the table. And the dog got it. A full grown collie. Jumped up on the table, snagged the bird and headed to the living room at full speed.

We heard the crash when he hit the table and stuff started falling to the floor, and the ensuing chase was somewhat like a Benny Hill episode.

11

I recall one year having to listen to my bitch mother complain all Thanksgiving Day about what we didn’t have. Talk about unclear on the concept! And to make it worse, we actually had a lot and were much luckier than most people.

12

I was in my early 20s, living in a crappy apartment. Before heading over to my mom’s, I pulled an old winter coat out of the closet for the first time that year. As I drove along, I noticed at times a faint aroma, and got weird looks from people when I stopped at the store for rolls. I walked in the back door and Mom exclaimed: “get that dead mouse off your shoulder!” Those people at the store probably thought i was wearing it as some sort of fashion accessory.

13

Our first collective T’day after my mother died, I brought the turkey - 3/4 cooked - to finish in my sister’s oven. Which promptly quit working. We had to take the bird to a neighbor’s to finish when THEY were done with theirs.

And we seem to have a major plumbing problem - usually a backup, sometimes in the main house line - every Thanksgiving. This year’s was a worrying wet spot in a first floor ceiling that I suspect is going to cost a bundle in time and cash to repair; the only good thing is that it seems transient and we don’t have to do anything about it in the short term.

14

Many years ago (when all the grocery stores were still closed on Thursday), my aunt found a start-it-the-night-before-&-cook-it-at-200° recipe for the turkey. Like smoking a bird, long, slow cooking should result is a really juicy bird. Problem was, either thru late night user error or oven malfunction, the oven kicked into self-clean. This was noticed, but because they get so hot safety feature prevents you from opening the door until it gets to a suitably low temperature. The bird was literally cremated; finally opened the door to ashes! :eek: Canned tuna fish was the main course that year.

15

‘… And then, the headless corpse of the roasted turkey rose off of the platter, dripping grease as it wrested the electric carving knife from Father…’

16

FTW!

17

Not really a horror story, but along the same lines. . .

It was on a Thanksgiving Day some years ago that I saw my mother for the last time that she was alive and coherent. She was admitted to the hospital the next day with breathing problems. From that point on to the *rest of her life, I never saw her again that she wasn’t (mercifully) doped up with a bunch of tubes attached to her.

*Which was nine days. Advanced cancer, probably lung.

18

LMAO!!!

19

More tales of scalp wounds than I would have expected.

Our disaster was about thirty years ago. My brother was recently married and we went over to his house for Thanksgiving. When they unwrapped the bird, it was judged to be foul. As in spoiled. As in Eeew! What stinks?

It took the rest of the morning to find ANYTHING that was open. (Remember the part of being 30 years ago? Not even gas stations were open back then.) Eventually, their dialing reached someone at a restaurant, so that was the year of the non-turkey Thanksgiving pizzas.

20

Not sure if this is a horror story or not, but this year was the first year in forever that I was pegged to host Thanksgiving dinner. My sister-in-law usually does it, but this year she went out of town to visit some other relatives for Thanksgiving. So I’m doing a small feast for me, my parents, and a few others.

My Dad and brother are away at hunting camp, and planning on coming in sometime Thanksgiving day. This is normal and traditional in my family, so no big deal. But it does leave my mother alone. She’s had a year of bad health, and she’s old, and has had a bunch of hospitalizations and surgeries. Still, she’s been doing well, so I don’t insist she stay with me while Dad is out of town.

Wednesday night, Mom comes over, we have a nice dinner, we drive her home around 8, and remark on how sprightly she is, considering her health issues. I don’t think anything more about her until my phone rings at 1:15am. It’s her, she’s sick - badly, badly sick. Mr. Athena and I get dressed and head over. I take one look, and I think “bowel obstruction” because in the past year, I’ve become far too knowledgeable about all things relating to my mother’s bowels. We get her in the car with a huge plastic bin since she can’t seem to stop vomiting, and speed her over to the ER.

And the ER goes just like ER visits do. They stabilize her, they do X-Rays, they do CT scans, they call the surgeons, they admit her. By the time we get home, it’s 5am. And I’ve got a whole pile of people coming over for Thanksgiving dinner. I don’t think about such things, and fall into bed. Of course I can’t get to sleep very well because I’m wired and worried about my Mom, so I’m up at 8am, wandering around my house like a zombie, furiously caffeinating. I can’t call anyone else to push dinner on; everyone is either out-of-town or at hunting camp. In fact, we can’t even get in touch with my Dad or brother, because there’s no phone at camp, and the trees block cell phone service.

I head up to the hospital, check on my Mom (she’s fine, other than a bowel obstruction, which as of today looks like it’s going to go away without surgery), wander back home, consider calling the whole thing off. But I’ve got a 14 pound turkey in the fridge, several sides made, and WTH am I going to do with it all if I don’t cook it? I drink more coffee and throw the damn thing in the oven.

I can’t say it was the best turkey I ever cooked (it turned out dry), and I completely forgot to make mashed potatoes, and my Dad was more or less in shock after driving home, calling my mother the minute he had cell service, and having his phone run out of batteries the second after she says “I’m in the hospital!”, but everyone had a decent time. I can now say that I can cook a turkey in my sleep, since I was a walking zombie most of the day.