whats the worst thing youve cooked or eaten for a holiday? or the worst holiday you've had?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Once time my elderly mother made the pumpkin pie, but it was really runny when we cut into it. We figured that the recipe called for two cook temperatures, one at a high temp to start cooking for 15 minutes, then a lower temperature for 30 minutes (or whatever). We think she set the timer for the first cook time and took the pie out at 15 minutes. We fixed it by sneaking it back into a oven to finish cooking while she wasn’t looking.

Can we add awful stuff people bring to holiday potlucks? The worst was a dessert bar with a pastry base and some kind of whipped white layer topped with nuts. The problem was the white layer was made with lard. Rancid lard. I had to spit it out into a napkin while trying to figure out who the hell brought it in. And why lard? who knows?

22

Either the first or second year we were married, we were living in Arlington (Boston suburb). Both of us were very sick. We had soda crackers and 7-Up for Thanksgiving.

23

Does it still count if I didn’t actually end up eating the darn thing?

24

I LOVE pickled herring. But I usually have it to break the fast on Yom Kippur (or just as a random lunch) and wouldn’t serve it for X-mas.

I’ve had pretty decent holiday meals, and have generally been able to just skip the foods that don’t look appealing. But once I felt a social obligation to eat the potato kugel at passover. Yuck. dry, pasty, bland… just a waste of space.

25

Each year for both Thanksgiving and Christmas my M-I-L makes this… stuff. I don’t even know what it is, so I’ll just describe it.

First, she cooks a ham by plopping in in a waterbath canner, adding an inch or so of water, and then sticking it on the stovetop to simmer for several hours. I’ve never heard of this before I met my wife, but I guess steaming big cuts of meat is A Thing — someone over in the turkey thread mentioned that was how they cooked their Thanksgiving turkey.

Anyway, so after a few hours my MIL has a cooked ham and a couple of quarts of ham-flavored water in a pot. So what she does is, she pulls out her largest crock pot and starts dumping dry egg noodles into it: pounds and pounds of dry egg noodles. When the crock pot is mostly full she then takes the water from the pan and then ::urk:: pours it over the noodles and walks away to let it “cook”. Now, she isn’t cooking the noodles in the ham water as most people would think of cooking pasta (not boiling it in a large amount of liquid), but rather there’s maybe 2 inches of vaguely ham-flavored water in a crock pot filled with compacted dry noodles. So she then cranks it up and cooks it for an hour or three. The resulting goo is basically a starchy wallpaper paste: it has the consistency of chunky peanut butter and tastes like wet raw pasta, because of course the ham water doesn’t have much actual flavor.

The first year I was with my wife I took some to be polite. Holy. Fuck. NEVER again. That shit is vile. And of course my wife and her immediate family gobble it up like it was manna from heaven. I found out from her cousin this past year that everyone else has had the same reaction I had 19 years ago tomorrow: mild and polite curiosity and then, after actually tasting it, complete, total, and permanent revulsion.

Don’t even get me started on the damn turkey, cooked six month before (!) and then frozen (!!), only to be thawed Thanksgiving morning. Served cold. So now I cook the turkey, and produce an actually edible product. And I cook the cranberry sauce. And the stuffing (boxed, but better than nothing). And the pies. And and and…

We went to my in-laws for Easter once, and the Easter dinner was Hamburger Helper. Honest to God. We invited them to Easter dinner the following year and I grilled a tenderloin with wild rice dressing and homemade sage bread. My F-I-L complained that I was too fancy a cook and was trying to be a show off.

So. To answer the OP: every damn meal / dinner at my in-laws.

26

So there is a such a thing as too much butter! Who knew? :wink:

27

Probably the time I spent Thanksgiving in the hospital. I was in no danger, but they kept extending my stay. I was grouchy and finding fault with everything. The staff were saints to put up with me.

28

Years ago, I was cracking about a dozen eggs into a bowl using our backyard hen’s eggs. Like you, we collect them daily and never had a rotten one. But one of the last eggs cracked into the bowl had this hideous greenish black yolk and very gross runny white. Oddly it smelled just like a regular egg–no rotten odor.

We were perplexed, then we got another one about a week later. A few days after that, one of our hens died. Our vet said she probably had an infection of the oviduct, which causes the black yolk & then the infection likely turned into sepsis, which killed her (we don’t give antibiotics). Anyway, just chiming in that even with your set up, a black egg is still a possibility.

29

In '75 for most of the day I didn’t realize it was Thanksgiving. By the time I did, all I could find was a box of chocolate cake donuts covered with white powdered sugar. Which wasn’t all that bad actually, as I was in high spirits.

30

That would have been the last time that they set foot in my house.

31

I’ve posted this before, but up until my early 20’s, Thanksgiving and Christmas was always tainted by Mom and Dad arguing about which’s family’s party we should go to. “We went to your side last year, this year we’re going to mine!” or “We’ll go to your side for lunch and my side for dinner!” When I was younger, it was made worse because I just wanted to stay home and play with my new toys.

By my early 20’s, we started hosting Christmas dinner at my house and within a few years that slowly fragmented to everyone just having their own gathering, especially as most of my cousins were 10-20 years older than I was. One year, one of my cousins came over to our house for dinner (he didn’t get along with his Dad) and we had nothing as we had gone out to someone else’s house. For some reason, we didn’t even have any leftovers to give him (most of my relatives were lousy cooks).

32

One of my Aunts would cook the turkey which was okay (as I said, all my relatives weren’t good cooks), but the ham was always from a certain caterer. Only only was the ham canned, but it was covered (soaked) in a heavy cinnamon glaze and tons of cloves which I hate. To make it worse, the caterer was well liked for funerals, so to matter the occasion, I always thought of the ham as funeral food.

This isn’t a holiday, but when my grandmother passed away, we followed her Buddhist tradition and met every day for a week, then at 14 days, 28 days 35 days (we skipped the 49 day ceremony joking that my grandmother would have to walk fast!), which meant I had that godawful ham for a week straight, then once a week for the next three weeks!

33

The worst holiday I ever had was one Thanksgiving back in West Texas, when my shrew of a mother spent the entire day whining about all the things we didn’t have. Fact is though, we were solidly middle class and not wanting of anything.

34

It was that Canadian Thanksgiving when I was in jail in Winnipeg for vagrancy. Lousy company (except I learned to swear in Cree) and dinner was fried beef liver with charred side dishes and some awful fruit punch.

35

One year at Easter Grandma was under the weather and wasn’t feeling like cooking like she usually did. Mom offered to cook dinner but Uncle decided we’d all go out to dinner. He told us where to meet them but didn’t bother to get a reservation at the restaurant. When we got to the restaurant we were told there would be at least a three hour wait for a table. We ended up at Steak & Shake. Uncle fumed and whined and complained the whole time, and then ended up sticking us with the bill. I guess at least we got off cheap, would have been worse if he had stuck us with the bill at the place he wanted to go to.

36

An office Christmas party. The ~3 steps which everyone had to climb to get to the seating area was too much for an obese chain-smoking co-worker; caused her to pretty much die on the spot.

That was our first and last time having an event involving stairs.

37

Baking powder…baking soda…one’s as good as the other, right? I mean if you are out of baking powder, you can substitute baking soda, right? Practically the same!

Or not.

38

I love these threads. Lancia, your story had me wiping tears.

I hosted Thanksgiving at my house for all the years I was married over two husbands, so I am experienced at offering a fully homemade lavish Thanksgiving feast for many. It takes 3 days to deploy, but it’s not that much work when you do a few things each day in the run-up. As such, I always enjoyed every bite of what I made and I’m happy to say, it seems all the guests did, too.

Since being widowed, however, I am frequently invited to spend the holiday at other people’s gatherings. I am grateful for the sentiment, but honestly – I kind of hate it. There’s nothing fun about being the stray at someone else’s family get-together. Worse, trying to look pleased while eating some frankly godawful food.

The worst one: Two years ago (or was it three?), I was invited by a close friend to join some friends of hers at the coast. I had met the hosts a time or two, but I did not know them well. Their home is about 2 1/2 hours away from where I live. I was asked to bring a vegetable side dish.

Five hours of driving coming and going necessitated that I bring my little dog, too. <cackle!>

I dutifully made the side dish, knowing it would be inedible by the time it traveled for 2 1/2 hours. Got myself together, loaded up the dog and his accoutrements (crate, water dish, etc.), noted that it looked like rain was coming and headed out.

Rain did come. Boy, howdy, did it come. Buckets and buckets. I drove in terror up the coast wishing for a third speed on my wiper switch (“Deluge” setting) as boulders literally crashed down upon the road in front of me. I practiced being grateful: At least the boulders were in front of the car and not on top of it. At least I can look forward to a nice dinner when I finally get there. If I finally get there.

Alas. The turkey was as dry as kitty litter. The mashed potatoes were instant. My vegetable was as disgusting as I foresaw it would be. Comically, my friend had made virtually the same vegetable side dish and hers was disgusting, too. The stuffing came from a box and had been overbaked. And there was no gravy!! NO GRAVY!!

I couldn’t stay long as daylight was fading fast and the rain had no intention of abating. If anything, it had grown more fierce. After a mere 2-hour visit, the dog and I were again away through the biblical rains. We took a longer, slightly safer route, but as the light faded, driving became ever more hazardous and scary.

My gratitude reached its pinnacle that day when we arrived home intact. I built a roaring fire in the woodburner and had as much wine as I liked.

Next day, I celebrated Private Thanksgiving, all homemade: A little roast chicken with a dab of stuffing, mashed potatoes, some Brussels sprouts sauteed in butter with dill, glazed carrots and cranberry sauce. And gravy. Loads of gravy! Pumpkin pie for dessert. More wine. Slobbed out in comfy clothes with no makeup. Another cheery fire. Just how I like Thanksgiving!

39

20-25 years ago I was invited to Thanksgiving dinner at some friends-of-a-friend.

Dinner itself was pretty good, and relatively conventional. The only specific I recall is that this was my first introduction to edible flowers, which they used in the salad. (I liked them.)

Dessert featured far and away the worst pumpkin pie I’ve ever had, made according to what the hosts described as a “more natural” recipe. The filling was unusually dark brown in color, and visibly stringy. The stringiness came through when eating it, as did the seeming total lack of sugar.

Many other guests claimed to enjoy it, but I found it pretty unappetizing and only ate a couple of bites.

It was a minor blot on an otherwise really good Thanksgiving weekend…

40

You’re supposed to put the Cornish Game Hen inside a Chicken; Chicken inside a Duck and then the Duck goes in the Turkey. Trust me…:smack: