Does anyone else cook the turkey on their gas grill? I did last week. Came out pretty good.
I’m working.
I can’t really complain. In a profession that requires holiday work I’ve managed to be off Thanksgiving and Christmas for quite a few years in a row. The streak ends this year. So far the only after work offer I have is from my ex-wife. I have to decide if good food is worth being uncomfortable. Probably not but my kids are going to be there.
Mine will be similar. Gag the fuck outta me, as my dear granny used to say (really).
“Dinner” at my in-laws will be scheduled for 12:00 sharp. If my wife and kids and I aren’t there by 11:50 or so, my MIL will call us and wonder where we are and ask why we haven’t arrived yet. We live less than 5 minutes away.
So we will make a point to arrive around 11:30. When we get there My FIL will be watching some Pat Robertson-type on the living room television while my MIL messes around in the kitchen not really doing anything because she can’t really cook. She contributes mashed potatoes, but they’re the powdered ones that just need boiling water added. Not ideal, but frankly better than what she could cook herself. My wife and I always cook the turkey, so we’ll bring that already carved and in a croak pot to keep hot. My FIL cooks a ham, and other guests contribute the rest of the meal: my SIL brings chocolate pie (Jell-O pudding in an Oreo crust, yuck), my wife’s aunt brings the green bean casserole (straight from the Betty Crocker cookbook), another brings this huge platter of crackers and dips and other munchies that would be more appropriate at a Super Bowl party, and of course somehow that revolting pink crap made from marshmallows and canned fruit end up on the table as well.
About 1:30 someone will finally realize what time it is and start actually getting the food ready. My FIL will carve the ham, I’ll whip up some gravy, and the food will be laid out on the dining room table, buffet style. Then everyone will grab a paper plate and plastic utensils, load up on now semi-cold food, and then go sit in the living room to listen to my FIL spread gossip about the people at their church. Before we eat he’ll say grace, which will take 10 minutes and include lots of yelling about how awesome Jesus is and involve waving hands in the air whilst several of the other family members sway back and forth while mumbling.
An hour or three later, when I’m starting to think seppuku is a legit alternative to listening to anymore of their fucking drivel, my wife will decide it’s time to start thinking about heading home. We’ll actually leave an hour after that.
That’s what it’s been for the past 18 years.
This year may be a bit different. This happened back in September and frankly, my nephew’s wife’s family is fucking nuts. Nuts to the point that my in-laws, who are pretty nuts themselves, don’t want anything to do with the nephew’s in-laws. So, if said in-laws are invited (and I have a sinking suspicion that they are), there’ll be whole new levels of drama to deal with.
(Example: My FIL’s cousin is an ordained minister—went to bible college and everything. He’s been the one to officiate everyone’s marriages since my FIL and MIL got married in… 1968? I think? He’s a nice guy and one of the few non-loonies in the family. Anyway, when my nephew proposed to his half-brained girlfriend he—with her blessing—asked his grandpa’s cousin to officiate. No problem, of course. Well, 4 or 5 days before the wedding her parents decided that they didn’t like the guy and told her in no uncertain terms that if my FIL’s cousin officiates they (the fiancé’s parents) would not attend the wedding and furthermore would ask / demand that everyone in her family boycott it as well. So she asked / told my nephew that he had to call up his grandpa’s cousin and inform them that not only did he no longer want him conducting the ceremony, he and his wife were dis-invited from the wedding. The wedding was officiated by her aunt who was “ordained” by answering an ad in the back of Rolling Stone of something, and didn’t know the words to the ceremony: she actually had to stop in the middle of the ceremony, pull out her iPhone, and Google the words she had to say for the ceremony!!! As a result everyone basically despises each other. So, yeah. There’s a whole new level of crazy going on this year.)
So HH, I’m with you. I’m not a fan of Thanksgiving.
Actually, let me rephrase that. I’m not a fan of the way we’ve ended up doing Thanksgiving. We live 45 miles from Bandon, Oregon which is of course right on the seaside. What I would love to do some year, or hell every year, is go over there for a few days, stay at some nice place like the Windermere, and have a quiet, sit-down dinner with family that are invited because I enjoy their company and not because someone else said they were obligated to be included. I think Thanksgiving should be a day of quiet introspection, wherein we take stock of our lot in life and truly assess just how good so many of us have it. The fact that it’s turned into this huge glutton fest with people I don’t particularly want to be around has made a mockery of what the day should be.
Anyway, rant over. I need to go shower so I can go into town and grab the turkey and fixins for the stuffing. Sigh.
I’m just glad I’m off from work. I live alone and everyone I’m friends with will be busy with their family or working. I’ll probably make enchiladas for myself, it’s way too much of a pain to make a traditional thanksgiving for just me and I don’t want to be eating leftovers for a month.
At my current job, holiday work is required. I despise working the major holidays as public transit is always a pain, especially at night
Going to stick a sheetpan in the oven with chicken and fall vegetables. Make a small container of dressing and have that with a glass or two of wine. Then spend the day alternating between football, naps, and Beatles Anthology. Maybe head to the local bar around 3. Maybe not. Pert near perfect as far as I’m concerned.
This year my family will be at a ski resort (snow conditions are great for this time of year). My sister and her family will be with us. We will get up and make it to the lifts by around 10:00 am. We will ski till about 3:00 pm (having a normal lunch on the mountain somewhere). Have cocktails and hit the hot tub for an hour or so. Get cleaned up and head to the restaurant where we have reservations for all of us for a traditional Thanksgiving meal, that none of us will have to worry about cooking. No creepy distant relatives to talk to, no worrying about which channel the TV is on, no having to listen to whoever is cooking complain about the heat in the kitchen…it’s gonna be awesome.
I’m really looking forward to this Thanksgiving. Kids are gone, in-laws are too far away. If we get some snow it’ll be skiing in the morning, then the lady who owns the dive bar down the street is hosting Thanksgiving dinner for her friends. Afterwards she’ll open the bar and the leftovers are for the customers (there should be a ton of food).
So no pressure, skiing, full bar, jukebox, and great food with friends, just like the Pilgrims.
My mom is hosting this year and asked me to cook the turkey since last year my sister did it and it was… not the best. My mom is cooking most of the sides with my sister cooking the rest. But she’ll probably bring hers whereas I’ll need to get to my mom’s early to get the bird in the oven and then loiter around. Despite my sister’s exile from bird-duty, everyone is a competent to good cook and the food will be traditional Thanksgiving stuff: potatoes, stuffing, cranberries, etc with some Polish sausage and a few other trimmings.
My sister and I will both bring our households which are virtually identical: husband, wife, older son (16-19 years old) and younger son (both eight, born a month apart). We’re the sort of family that gets sarcastic or a little one-uppy with one another but no great debates or yelling matches most of the time. I don’t predict any real Thanksgiving strife. My nephew (16) will mope and sulk that he’s not out with his girlfriend and probably sit in a corner with headphones on most of the time. My son (19) is more assimilated into the adults and will likely hang out and chat although he works retail and may need to leave early to work. He’s getting paid double time so won’t mind at all.
Speaking of shopping, my mom and sister are both the sort who stand outside of a store on Black Friday so they’ll be itching to wrap dinner up early to get out there. They’ll spend part of the time looking through newspaper ads and then want to be out of the house by 5 o’clock or so. Twenty minutes later, I’ll be at home for the rest of weekend.
Guess I’ll need to spend part of the day being thankful for a family that largely gets along, has fun together and isn’t a giant pot of rage-drama.
It’s encouraging to read about everyone’s plans. We seem to run the gamut here, from “not a thing and that’s how I like it” to “genuinely enjoyable family time” to “suffering through hours of drama/boredom” to everything in between.
It will be the same as it always is. Boring. We are having it at our house, with the In-laws and my wife’s sister and her family. We do not see the wife’s sister and family but 1-2 other times in a year, even tho they are only about 50 miles away. No one has anything in common so there is not much to talk about. Just a bunch of small-talk that I hate. In the past I would convivially try to fill empty time with discussion and activities like games, but as of late I don’t care any more and I will let someone else be uncomfortable. My kids will probably sneak-off to their rooms to avoid the mind-numbing conversation.
Fortunately, we will use real dishes so I take my post near the sink and just wash everything that goes into it by hand, slowly, so I have something more interesting to do. My wife is a good cook and I know the meal will be great, but it will be relatively fast compared to how long the rest of the day seems to go. This year, I am planning on a bike ride or long walk in the AM with my daughter (who is away at school but will be home). That’ll give us both a nice start to the day.
I desperately want to have Thanksgiving on the road somewhere, preferably where they do not celebrate the damn holiday. But, my son’s sport usually interferes with any travel plans, and this year is no exception. One of these days!
One year we were visiting our son in Seattle and they were about to put the bird in the oven when the power failed. My son has a gas generator that powers everything except the oven and the clothes dryer. So he fired up the gas grill. It was excellent. Later he baked a pumpkin pie in the microwave. It wasn’t too bad. Everything else was cooked on the gas range (so the stove uses gas top and electric oven).
We will get on a plane tomorrow to spend the week with out other son in Boston. So there is no going there; we will be there. My DIL will start the bird maybe at noon. She makes something she calls pilgrim potatoes, full of butter and cheese. Cholesterol heaven. I am not sure if she will bake or perhaps buy a pie. And we will sit down around 4 and gorge. I suppose someone will say a prayer beforehand. Although we did the same last year, I don’t recall. We will watch the Macy’s parade in the morning. When we went to Seattle, we watched it in the afternoon. Overall, I enjoy it well enough.
Honey ham for the man, walleye for me , then the standard go withs. Watch some football, and get ready for Italy for Christmas/New Years!!
Food will be traditional Thanksgiving fare, but the food is not important.
We will have four generations, with an age range of 3 months to 85 yrs old. There will be goofing off, a fair bit of drinking by some, lots and lots of laughing. The oldest two, my mother and my aunt, will bicker (mostly lightheartedly) about what it’s like to be the older/younger sister, and who had it harder. I will take my aunt’s side because I am the oldest of my siblings. This goes without saying, because it happens at every gathering. 
I’ll work. Extra $$$ and it gets the both of us out of the family do, which is really not fun. Then we’ll have nachos. It’s our tradition from being stuck in an airport one T-day and that’s all we could find to eat. (Turkey is on Friday)
We have been invited to my niece’s house for dinner. She asked me to bring green bean casserole and a sweet potato dish. On the Sunday following, I will cook another Thanksgiving dinner just for my wife and daughters.
I may have posted this before:
Every year, as I plan my Thanksgiving meal, I remember back to the first dinner I hosted for my In Laws. I knew that my Father In Law was pretty fussy, so I really wanted to do it right, and I went all out. Dinner started out really well. Everyone seemed to like the food. I was sitting next to my Mother In Law and across from my Father In Law. He was working on his third helping of my stuffing smothered in gravy when it happened. My MIL said, “How do you get the stuffing to come out so moist? Mine is always dry even when I cover it with foil while it cooks.” I told her that I always cook the stuffing inside the bird, and that adding the smoked oysters helped keep it moist.
My FIL looked at me with his fork paused and a horrified look on his face…
My MIL next asked, “This gravy has so much flavor. What is in it?” To which I replied that it was just standard giblet gravy with the drippings from the turkey. My MIL asked, “What’s a giblet?”
As I started to explain, my FIL dropped his fork, jumped out of his chair and headed for the bathroom. He came out fifteen or twenty minutes later, looking very pale. “Florene, get your coat, we need to go home” was all he said. That was the last bite of any of my food that Frank ever ate. Before he knew how it was prepared, he was eating it like he had never eaten before.
It always makes me smile as I cook to recall this
I guess I don’t really “do” it anymore. I grew up in a big family that always had a reunion so it was a big crowded loud affair with all the traditional Southern dishes. They’re all gone though. This year even my older daughter has moved away and started her own family so it’s me and my 13 year old who doesn’t really care about the traditional foods. For the past few years I’d do a chicken and dressing with canned cranberry jelly, plus sweet potatoes, green beans and a dessert. This year I didn’t even shop other than catching a good deal on some Stove-Top I will likely add some chopped chicken breast to.
Longhair75, that’s awesome.
I’m a seasoned veteran of making my delicious full traditional dinner, but I’m sick to death of the multiple 20-yr old family members doing nothing to help. So we ditched them. Feels goooood.
Mine will be really upbeat. I’m spending it at my sister’s place. She just spent the past few months canvassing for Katie Porter. Porter was just declared the winner of CA-45, flipping that congressional seat blue. My sister just sent me a picture of her with Ms. Porter after the election was called.
Many years ago mom & aunt tried to talk Grandmama into making the meal. C’mon, you can do it, they said. We’ll help, they said. What do you want us to bring, they said. Without batting an eyelash, she replied, “the turkey”.
If you can make Parsnipanny by mid-afternoon, I could maybe get you an in with the Solberg crowd.