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Chit Chat
holyguacamole79
member
CRACKpot Thanksgiving sides
holyguacamole79
member
in Chit Chat
My mom always wanted to make my grandfather feel relaxed on Thanksgiving. He insisted one year on helping, so she put him in charge of the pumpkin pie. Papa made it and served it proudly. We all took a bite and it was like the "Friends" Thanksgiving episode with the trifle from hell (it tastes like feet!). Papa realized he forgot to add sugar to the recipe. We had a bonfire that night and the pumpkin pie went into it. Papa never offered to help again.
Re: CRACKpot Thanksgiving sides
One year my exMIL mistook liquid smoke for vanilla so the whipped cream tasted like meat. She vehemently denied it even though everyone said the same thing and the liquid smoke was on the counter.
Another year, exMIL's ovens went out so I was asked to make the turkey. Everyone kept talking about how good it was and how it was so much better than usual. She didn't talk to me for the rest of the day.
Another year, exSIL had a cold and was severely congested. NBD, right? Wrong. She started retching into the kitchen sink while everyone was trying to eat and throwing a fit about the fact that no one was helping her.
Another year, exSIL brought rolls. She was only allowed to bring rolls and nothing else because she's such a terrible cook. Those rolls could have been used in a stoning.
Another year, my grandma got drunk and put so much sage into the dressing that it was literally green. It was so bad that my cousin hid her plate under the couch because our family was very much "eat what you take." Same year, Aunt's house was roach infested which was NBD to her, highly ick to me. I freaked out when I saw one on the wall behind me (probably going for the dressing under the couch) and my aunt just smacked it with her hand.
I think that's it. This also explains why I'm a control freak about TG.
One year my maternal grandmother, who is not particularly known for her cooking, wanted to get "fancy" with the turkey. She had recently seen a recipe in a magazine for a more gourmet version of a regular roast turkey. Unfortunately she misread the temperature it was supposed to cook at and we ended up eating the unintentionally slow-roasted turkey close to 9 or 10pm - HOURS after we were scheduled to eat.
I was just a kid so I remember having to eat and then going to bed immediately after. Apparently the adults had whiled away the extra time before dinner by drinking wine, which meant that a couple of aunts & uncles ended up sleeping through the meal.
Apparently the stove thing - coil? - wasn't even, so when he went to stir it slid off pretty quick and hit the ground.
Nothing broken, he wasn't burnt, but he was promptly kicked out of the kitchen unless needed.
Another time - this might be just inviting M's parents over for dinner - and we got a roast. Apparently someone changed the expiry date, because just as we were taking out of packaging to put something on it there was a horrible rancid scent.
M jumped, threw it back in the packaging and went to the store to get it fixed. Luckily still had receipt so the just exchanged it. Guhhh
We often had some cousins over (my dad's 1st cousin, her husband, and their sons). They are very close to our family, so they joined us for almost every major holiday. The husband (J) is rather quiet and mostly watches football and keeps to himself. Well, he had a bit to drink that night and my dad & cousin pulled out some old family photo albums. They found one of my grandma smoking a cigarette. J in his drunken stupor said, "ooooh loooooook .... Aunt Mary is smoking a doooooooooobieeeee!"
Another Thanksgiving, those same cousins were over. Their 2 sons are around the ages of my brother & sister. They were banished to the "kids table" in the other room, which suited them just fine (I was in college, so I had graduated to the adult table). It was the late 90's shortly after the whole Monica Lewinsky debacle. They sent my sister (the youngest ... she was maybe 8 at the time) to the adults table to tell a joke. She walks in and says, "What do Monica Lewinsky & a Coke machine have in common? They both say 'insert Bill here'". My sister (I think) didn't know what she was saying ... she was just repeating it. My mom scolded her, asking her where she heard that. My sister giggled and revealed it was one of our cousins. Their mom (my Godmother) screamed his name from the dining room to the kitchen where they were all laughing hysterically that they tricked my sister into telling that joke.
The recipe said sweetened condensed milk, no other sugar. Excellent! Fewer ingredients. Except when I went to the grocery store I grabbed the unsweetened condensed milk without even thinking....
DH wouldn't eat more than one piece of pie, but I didn't think it was *THAT* bad. Just very pumpkin-y.
I'll have to wait for Christmas for my cookie baking debacle.
My modern funny Thanksgiving stories are about the booze. My parents drink very little, and holidays have never involved alcohol. Well when I first brought by FI (then boyfriend) home for Thanksgiving, they were aware that we like to drink and both of my parents went out and bought supplies. My dad was super proud of himself for getting a beer sampler pack ("I got you beers! I hope they're good ones! Did you see it has different kinds?!") and my mom got like 3-4 different kinds of wine. I think that year was probably a hundred times as much booze in the house as ever before. So after my dad has given us a few beers in succession, we sit down to the meal and my mom pours us wine. FI failed to hear her tell him to "say when," so she kept pouring until the wine glass was completely filled to the rim. We still break out laughing about that years later. "How much wine would you like? Maybe THE WHOLE GLASS FULL?"
There was the TG right after my grandpa (mom's dad) passed away and we decided to have her entire family over to the old house....terrible idea: my mom's family is full of mean, vindictive, trashy, rude, horrible people (can you tell I don't like them?)....the day was horrible, and the night ended in a car accident and a trip to urgent care.
There was the time we ended up with both sets of grandparents at my aunt and uncle's house (grandma and grandpa are divorced and remarried and have been for a lot longer than they were together)...the grandparents were passive aggressive the entire day and kept pulling my horse is bigger than your horse crap...The rest of us had been sneaking sips of tequila all day in an attempt to find our sanity, and when dinner rolled around and we all said what we were thankful for, my mom responded with "I'm thankful for Agave."
Every New Years Day my friend's family had a brunch. We looked forward to it every year!
That year I was somewhat seeing my friend's brother {whole other} so I was kind of excited to be able to be around him.
Typically we saw my granny and her husband in January for xmas - her hours plus she lived an hour away. This New Years Day, they were picking me up after the brunch so we could have our xmas.
My friend bailed on me, her brother was pissing me off, so I decided to get into the mimosa's. My friend's mum typically left the bottle out and allowed us to fill up extra if we wanted to.
I spent most of my time on a couch, near the kitchen, refilling my drink with extra champagne.
My mum got there to get me, I come out and she nearly makes me walk home because - of course - I'm pretty sloshed. We get home, she shoves me in the shower with water to attempt to sober up.
Oops!
Crackpot TG sides - my mother's green bean casserole. Her philosophy is the longer she cooks something, the better it is. She gets up early in the morning to make her famous green bean casserole and she bakes it for hours until it's one solid, rubbery mass. She's an awful cook who likes her own cooking.
My Grandmother was an excellent cook. She used to make the dreaded Mincemeat Pie. You know, there's really meat in that stuff? I loved my Grandmother with my whole heart, but as hard as I tried, I couldn't eat that disgusting pie.
Late to the party1
I've actually never had mincemeat pie. But I've always been curious about it.
Love the stories! I wish I could share...perhaps I don't wish that, lol...but my mom was a great cook. TG meal was always perfect. My H handles TG dinner in our house. He does a great job.
However, here is my one weird TG story. Titled: Thanksgiving Dinner at a Bar
My H (b/f at the time) had evacuated to Miami from Hurricane Katrina. We came back to NOLA around mid-Nov. The gas lines had flooded, so we had no stove...or hot water for that matter!...until late Jan.
What were we going to do for TG! Few restaurants were open either. But a local bar was! And they served TG dinner that night. It was out of crockpots and hot plates, but we were so thankful to have even that little semblance of normal.
In a way, that was one of my most precious TG meals. Surrounded by strangers, but strangers united by the devastation we had all faced together. And we were all a big family that night. There was so much sadness, but that made the things we were thankful for that much more meaningful and important.
Sorry my post is a little more melancholy than funny! But we did laugh at the time...and laugh when we remember...our TG dinner at Pal's Bar.
I would be tempted to bust this out seeing other people in same situation as me
That being said, it's great that you had some semblance of normal for a holiday! What did you do without stove/hot water afterwards?
Lots of crockpot and microwave meals. In fact, my bday is Nov. 20th and we made a roast in the crockpot that year for it.
For hot water for dishes, I was crafty
. I'd send just water through our coffee maker to make it hot. And then dip one of those dish wands into it and hand wash the dishes that way.
As I'm sure you can imagine, showers were the worst. I'd stand away from the spray of cold water and just dip my wash cloth/soap into it.
The house was raised and the heaters were under the floors. Weird, but it was a 100-year-old house. The house didn't flood (super thankfully), though it came close. But the heaters did. Our landlady put in ventless gas heaters after that, but those didn't work until the gas came back on in late Jan. either.
We used space heaters and electric blankets. I was crafty with the space heaters also. They were sold out everywhere in the suburbs. Few NOLA businesses were open, most people were going out to the suburbs to get anything. But there was a little mom and pop ACE hardware open. I found them there. No luck on the electric blankets at first. I had to wait about two weeks before stores had them in again.
Food, in general, was annoying, lol. No stove, so fast food or restaurant? 20 minute one-way drive to the suburbs. Grocery store? Suburbs again. It was roughly about 6 months before you started seeing signs of store life. Two years in some of the hardest hit areas.
No mail delivery to my house until April-ish. The post office set up every day in a big parking lot for everyone to go pick up their mail. No other postal services. Just mail pick-up. It was crazy. No idea where my mail went for the entire months of Sept. and Oct., lol.