My first Thanksgiving as a married woman. It was just me and the hubby far from home. So a turkey is too much. I roasted a duck.
Now either duck is nasty tasting or I can’t cook. Nasty!
I just remembered the time we were invited by one of my wife’s colleagues to join them for T-day dinner. We showed up to find a group of complete strangers to us. Strangers who were all close friends with each other and who clearly resented the introduction of newbies. These were people who went on vacation together and who knew every detail of each others’ lives. Hell, for all I know they were swingers. Other than introductions, nobody spoke to me the entire time we were there, and in fact seemed to pointedly ignore my attempts at conversation.
And the food. Well, they were deep frying the turkey outside. The fryer was sitting on a sheet of plywood and oil was splashing all over the damn place. When it was finally supposedly done, the guy hauled this thing inside and carved it. I happened to be standing nearby when he was doing this, and I spotted bright pink (raw) meat. I managed to pick at side dishes, which, other than what I had brought, were uniformly bland or inedible. We left at the first opportunity and were never invited back, so I’m assuming they held a Star Chamber and black-balled us.
Possibly the Christmas I was invited to spend with Australian family. It was spent with my aunt-by-marriage’s elderly parents. That entire side of the family is extremely religious (I am decidedly not), so it was all pretty awkward to begin with. It turned out none of them had ever catered for a vegetarian before. My offers to help were firmly turned away; Grandma had got this, and she didn’t want anyone else in her kitchen.
I think the rest of them got ham, I was served a soggy, barely warmed veggie burger, with some dry mash and boiled carrots. The gravy was meat gravy, oops, sorry about that.
My worst personal holiday kitchen cockups aren’t too bad. An undercooked pecan pie that wasn’t fully set in the middle (but I made like six pies so whatever) and forgetting to put sugar in the cranberry relish (easily remedied).
I’ve been served some mediocre dishes but never been made sick by anything. No raw turkey to sneakily avoid. No spectacular fried turkey explosions or anything.
I was nervous when I cooked turkey in my immersion circulator but it turned out tasty.
IIRC, 2012 was the year Kayla as a vegetarian. I wasn’t involved, but some of her high school friends decided to have a Fourth of July weenie roast on the beach. I drove her there (and even bought a couple of bundles of firewood), and provided her with a package of tofu dogs.
To my shame, I’ve never bothered to ask her how those turned out, but it can’t have been too good.
Lancia (#25) and Aspenglow: (#38) Those were both great stories! So good in fact that I started reading them out loud just to introduce vocal inflections and variations. You know you’ve scored when I read something out loud to myself.
Thanks for sharing. I’m sure glad I’ve never had anything that bad happen to me over the holidays.
Aww, thanks, most kind. I’m glad your holidays have been mostly enjoyable!
However, I enthusiastically defer to Lancia as the winner of the thread. The word, “ham” should never be a descriptor of the word, “water,” unless the words, “split peas” or “lima beans” enter into the discussion at some point.
Plus my experience was comprised of one horrid day and one horrid meal. Lancia has endured his particular agony for many years, over many family occasions. That’s a special kind of hell.
I’ve loved every story and hope there are more to come. 
I overlooked the first part of the thread title, worst thing eaten. Well, it wasn’t bad, but our first Thanksgiving when we moved back to Thailand in 1994, we tried to go to a place putting on a great spread for the holiday. It was called Gourmet Gallery and popular with the better-paid expats. We show up only to find we needed a reservation. They were fully booked up and simply could not accommodate us. So our Thanksgiving meal was at a Thai sukiyaki place. And sukiyaki in Thailand is quite a step below what you can find in Japan. But we did make a reservation at that place for Christmas dinner as well as the next couple of Thanksgivings or so.
Be careful what you are asking for. Here’s one of mine that I posted here back in 2010 (Link here.):
I guess this falls under “the worst holiday I’ve ever had” category.
Was this early 80s? We drove down to Oregon for Thanksgiving and our former neighbor made a vegetarian lasagna with huge pieces of broccoli. I generally block it out of my mind. My dad still speaks of it as the weirdest food he’s ever had.
Second only to his first Thanksgiving at his inlaws. They made bread dressing with whole hard-boiled eggs. It was either that or bread dressing with oysters, something he had never had. Oyster dressing still shows up every Thanksgiving and Christmas. The only hard-boiled eggs are deviled.
lol i can restart that thread i have some crappy ones …