From frozen-in-the-middle turkey to the family dog eating the pie,
we’ve all had no-so-spectacular moments in the Thanksgiving annals.
Tell.
me yours and you could win two tickets to Kendall Jackson Chef Justin
Wangler’s Thanksgiving How-To (plus a sit-down feast) November 14, 2009 at the winery
CONTEST WINNER: SARAH. Here’s not never having another hot tub turkey adventure.
Recently
featured in an 8-page spread in Better Homes and Gardens, Wangler walks everyday home cooks through a tasty, but approachable do-ahead feast that will leave
you time to socialize. Or at least keep an eye on the dog.
Can’t go? Check out a Thanksgiving cornucopia of info including video, recipes, wine pairings and lots more from JW at the KJ website. (Hint: The Pumpkin Cornbread will be gracing BiteClub’s table.)
(PS. Feel free to keep adding your foibles even though the contest is over. I’ve heard a lot of folks around town say it’s making them chuckle.) 
++
The details: One winner will be randomly selected from comment entries. Want the full details? Click here.
I was ten the year my parents decided to forgo turkey for Thanksgiving and do a Roast Goose with Prune Stuffing. This was the Juliet Childs era and my mom and her lady friend were getting ready to attempt a French Thanksgiving. Well, the goose had many feathers still attached, so, my father and his friend pulled out the propane torch to singe them off. Did I mention that alcohol may have been involved? The greasy, burnt bird was now featherless,and the moment had come to do the foi gras and prune filling… but, the goose had come without its liver… so Mom decided to use bread crumbs and the “stock” from the bird. hmm.
I well recall a greasy mass of breadcrumbs and prunes alongside a propane-infused slice of goose. At least the pie was good that year!
At age 20, young and recently married, I decided to host my first Thanksgiving dinner. Not knowing how to even begin cooking a turkey, I opted for a turkey breast. Because I was so young..and uber excited about the crock pot I had gotten as a wedding gift, I thought, “I can save precious oven space, and just cook the turkey breast in the crock pot.” Did you know that you CAN overcook something in a crock pot?? When everyone showed up, and I began to assemble to table w/food..I lifted the lid on the crock pot to find turkey soup. It had completely disintegrated…to which my new Mother in Law replied, “You’d never make it in a real kitchen.” Thanksgiving..not so much.
Got drunk and told my devoted Catholic grandparents I don’t believe God exists.
Got kicked out and forced to apologize the next day.
Worst part: missed the entire dinner, had to eat a frozen pizza at home.
The Real Thanksgiving
Every year, this holiday in particular, is such a drama.
Is it because this is the kickoff for the holidays’ season?
The turkey hasn’t thawed and I just found that the invitations were never mailed.
I could call but I don’t think there is enough food for those I know are coming.
This is cranberry jelly, not compote. Oh no, you don’t use white bread in the dressing.
I thought I had more butter, I wish the grandkids would not chase the cat.
The sun is out, why is everyone wearing raincoats. Who invited the bowling league?
The alarm goes off and I awake early, that is what dreams are made of.
I need to preheat the oven, pies first and then 5 hours for a 20 pound turkey.
All is good….my favorite holiday.
As we all know, those with one oven on Thanksgiving play the juggling game. We are constantly moving things around, using multiple racks, and trying to cook multiple dishes in a tiny space. In this madness my mother went to the fridge and pulled out the sweet potato casserole to put in the oven. About 30 minutes later everyone was smelling bacon. Bacon? Where’s the bacon smell coming from? My mother goes to check the oven and lo and behold she realizes that she put the layered salad in the oven instead of the sweet potatoes. The entire salad was a melted mess of wilted lettuce and lovely smelling bacon bits. Needless to say we did not have salad with our meal that year.
Thanksgiving Disaster:
Several years we jumped into growing our own food by also deciding to raise and then butcher the turkey. My wife came home from the feed store with a turkey chick sometime in June declaring that the feed store said this was the time to start a bird to eat the last week in November. By October this giant bird was running around the yard and then by November it resembled a small elephant. The turkey dressed out at some 45 plus pounds and wouldn’t even fit into the oven on the bottom rack as the breast bone was hitting the top of the door frame. We wacked it with a bread board to break down the breast. We invited anybody and everybody to dinner and sent everyone home with LOTS of turkey.
Our first Thanksgiving was while my husband was still in the military. We we stationed at Fort Carson Colorado. We lived in a 2 room domed trailer. (I Love Lucy type), we invited a few of the guys from the base to join us and the guys watched the game while I prepared the turkey.
The picture of this needs to be realized. You see there wasn’t enough room in the little trailer for everyone to sit and watch Tv so the guys had folding chairs in the snow and they sat outside while the TV sat in the doorway and they watched the game.
Now inside I was putting the turkey in the oven. Mind you this trailer was old and filty when we moved in. The rent was $20 a month. We were newlyweds and I had never used a gas range. I cleaned the stove top and oven just before our feast. I went to the goodwilland picked up a roasting pan, just like my mom’s, it was an oval dark colored pan with speckles all over it and it had two handles and a dome covering lid. Well I turned the oven on and put the dome covered roasting pan with the turkey inside intside the oven and closed the door.
An hour later I was ready to baste the turkey but when I pulled it out and opened the lid it appeared raw and cold just like it was when I put it in. Then I realized there was no heat so I told the guys who were busy watching the game outside, “I don’t think the oven works.”
Then my husband says to me, “Did you light the pilot light?”…..Well having never cooked with gas I didn’t know I was supposed to…..so they said, ” just light a match and put it in the oven.”
So …with the turkey in the roasting pan on top of the stove top and the oven door open, I lit a match and put it in the oven….well
CABOOM!
and just like a cartoon I stood there looking at the range- the roasting pan went up in the air ….and then came down …..first the bottom of the pan ..then the turkey… and then the lid right on top….the guys all flew in the trailer. There I was holding the long match…dazed, next to the turkey in the pan my bangs, eyebrows and eyelashed all gone and the guys…. started laughing……
We all sat down to a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner. As we all were filling our plates – reaching here and there – all of a sudden we saw in horror my husband’s sweater on fire. He had reached over a candle to get something and his sweater sleeve caught the flame. As he brushed it against his chest to put it out the sweater suddenly had a ring of fire around him.
The outcome was good but needless to say he has very bad feelings for the sister-in-law who gave him the sweater the previous Christmas.
There are some good stories here but, the spa defrost one is exceptional! Thanks for the laughs.
One year I decided to deep fry a turkey for the first time. What the directions didnt mention was you dont deep fry the turkey as long as you bake the turkey!! So instead of turkey we had turkey jerkey because I cooked it way to long.
Hee hee!!! So My fiance and I wanted to host Thanksgiving for the first time in our brand new home. We where so proud and so excited we just couldn’t wait. We got a call from his mother who asked to bring a friend in who missed his flight to visit family, so he’d be all alone for the holidays. We thought the more the merrier! She informed us that he had a pretty bad cat allergy, if we could please lock the cats in the spare Bathroom. We where again glad to oblige. I asked if he was okay with dogs and she said no problem. They arrive and their poor friend proceeds to have an awful sneezing fit with watery eyes and stuffy nose the whole time. All the while our cats loud meows of protest were echoing in the powder room. I take the Turkey out and put it on the table to cool and go in the living room to sit down and enjoy a glass of wine before dinner. We’re all laughing and having a wonderful conversation, ( amidst the many sneezes ) when in walks a fully golden turkey attached to a cockerspainel body! My poor dog jumped on the table and got her head STUCK in the Turkeys bum! We jumped up to help her and to our horror relize her head was stuck! We had to rip apart the tukey to get to her sweet face and a few moments later she was free! No turkey for dinner but a very THANKFUL doggie! I guess thats the moral of Thanks-giving.
The turkey was carefully brined and rubbed with spices. The house was full of guests and my partner had told her family what a great cook I am. All the sides were moving along nicely, and I was going to cook the turkey on our new BBQ grill–which was ideal for the unseasonably warm weather we were having.
The turkey had been on the grill about an hour and I refilled my iced tea, sipping it to cool off while I snacked on some appetizers. People were milling around on the deck, in the house, and in front of the TV. Suddenly I heard someone yell “The grill is on fire!!” and I ran outside to find my lovely turkey completely aflame. I immediately doused it with my full glass of iced tea, and grabbed some more tea and poured it on the turkey until the flames settled down.
The turkey continued to cook in its singed skin, until the internal temperature was just right. I peeled off the skin before we sat down to eat, and guess what? We enjoyed a wonderful “Tea Smoked” gourmet turkey, and our guests pronounced it the juiciest, most flavorful bird they’d ever had.
Thanksgiving is my favorite meal of the year and in 2000 I did not want to miss it for anything. I was pregnant with my daughter and due right on Thanksgiving. I was really worried that I would not get to eat my favorite things on this great day of eating. I was so happy when she arrived two days before the holiday. I thought I could still participate by making my holiday specialities. Needless to say, I was in no condition to cook a series of complicated side dishes and the rest of the family had to pitch in at the last minute to get something on the table. Luckily, the whole thing was overshadowed by that beautiful new baby girl.
With two babies under the age of 4, I decided to host Thanksgiving dinner at my house. Never having purchased a whole turkey before I waited until the day before and found, of course, only frozen birds. Okay, no problem, I’ll just leave it out all night and we’ll be good to go. Wrong. We ended up trying to defrost it in the bathtub to no avail. Then we thought with it’s continuous heat and bubbles we could defrost it in the spa. Did you know turkey’s float? So there our turkey was bobbing around with the foamy bubbles outside in the spa. The moment my two young boys saw it they exclaimed, “Look! A boat!”
Our family, every T-day, traditionally holds a roto rooter celebration! For five consecutive years, everyone house in our family – here, Missouri, anywhere are family members lived, in unison and without coordination, had plugged drains (and backed up sinks. We subsequently have decided it’s the potato peels that slip through the garbage disposal unground that cause the problem. We’ve had sewage backed up in bath tubs, washed dishes in the bathroom, waited for 3 hours to have the meal (and let me tell you about the roto rooter price on a holiday!) Only more interesting was the year the BBQ turkey cooked only on the front side! – but that’s another story!
I have to tell my dad’s big Thanksgiving mishap! When I was very little, my mother’s parents were here visiting from the Boston area and my dad was set on impressing them with his newly acquired western cooking, by BBQing the turkey. Unfortunately, the turkey was a bit too big for the old Webber grill and the top of the turkey touched the lid ever so slightly. My father always tells us that he learned that a turkey is a very good heat conductor! The lid burned a core straight through the center of the turkey, needless to say, ruining the bird!
Thankfully, I’ve never had a Thanksgiving mishap.
My wife and I were living in El Salvador in the ’60′s and, like many ex-pats, were trying to maintain our American traditions. When we couldn’t find a turkey in the supermarket, our housekeeper volunteered to buy a nice big one in El Mercado. So we happily left that chore to her as we assembled the stuffing ingredients and side dishes. On Thanksgiving Day, we returned from shopping to find a large, LIVE turkey running around the back patio! We were quite horrified but she assured us that she would dispatch and pluck it before noon. We had to leave the house while she took care of it, returning to find the giant bird, quite deceased and plucked, hanging by its tied feet, high over the utility sink. I was told that the bird would be ready for the oven by 4. True to her word, she cut it down and handed it to my poor wife for stuffing and trussing. The only problem was, rigor mortis had set in and the wings were sticking out like airplane wings, stiff as boards, and she couldn’t get it to fit in the oven! Well, she finally managed and, would you believe? the turkey was delicious! My wife wouldn’t touch a bite, though..
Thanksgiving was at my parents’ house. I was responsible for bringing over my “famous” yam side dish. I assembled the dish there, a layer of yams, fresh pineapple slices on top, and the best part on top of that: a whole package of marshmallows. It went into the oven for a quick broil. But I was distracted by the arrival of friends and family at that most crucial moment… and what should have been a lightly browned marshmallow topping turned into a blackened blaze of fire. Everything for dinner that night had an unpleasant smokey taste and a charred scent lingered for the rest of the night… and my famous yam dish sadly went into the trash.
Oh yes. I remember the first time I cooked a turkey and failed to take out the bag full of giblets in the cavity. I discovered it when I took out the stuffing. What a surprise.
Thanksgiving… where turkey is served in the middle of the table, ready to be carved when it is time for dinner with a little ceremony by tradition. Coming from an Asian family, for many years the turkey is pre-carved and not served in the center of the table, mingling with the side dish. One previous year, we invited my cousin for dinner, she is married to an American guy, I over heared him say, “Oh, the turkey is now a side dish.” Since it is an American tradition, each year the turkey is now served the traditional way.
Thanksgiving has always been a tough time of year for me. It is not just eating processed turkey and canned jelled cranberry sauce by myself last year – tough times started more than thirty years ago on this annual festive Thursday. It all started with a day that left a deep scar. Back in my senior year of high school, in a fairy tale cliche’- “Off to Grandma’s house we go…”, while borrowing my big sister’s car – all heck broke loose. During a planned non-eventful ride to my Nana’s house, her car got loose and subsequently – I totaled my sister’s car and took 25 stitches in my forehead. Hoping for a little good luck on this year’s Thanksgiving. Wish me luck…I need it
I had some bad chicken nachos the night before Thanksgiving and totally got sick at a relatives house about two hours away from home. It was the worst, I couldn’t stand the smell of the turkey cooking and just had to lay there while random family members would check in on me and see how I was doing. Worst day ever!!
One Thanksgiving my wife decided to make dinner for her mother and 6 other wealthy widow ladies. My first clue that she needed help is when I arrived about an hour before dinner was to be served she hadn’t turned the oven ON for the turkey to cook…so cocktail hour became a couple hours…when the turkey finally was cooked and the pan drippings for the gravy were reducing she grabs the box of baking SODA instead of cornstarch, she said look the gravy is foaming! Then when I asked for the giblets of course they were still in the cavity of the turkey..now cooked. No matter how much wine and stock we could not salvage the baking soda gravy and had canned chicken stock thickened with CORNSTARCH as gravy..and More wine..Talk about cheering up the widows..
The first time I cooked a turkey, at the tender age of 24, I was totally terrified about it–particularly about leaving the neck and giblets inside prior to roasting. After the bird defrosted, I located the giblets in their little bag, fine, so far so good. I could not find the neck!!!! I had the turkey upended and was peering into the cavity with a flashlight, from both ends, in an effort to find the elusive neck. I finally called my Grandmother, and after a further search aided by her instructions, we finally concluded that I had purchased a neckless turkey! It was most interesting and hilarious, “treasure hunt” I’ve ever experienced.
When I was seven years old my mom–who can’t cook to save her life–made a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. She put about 20 WHOLE CLOVES in the pie. No one could understand why the pie had big black dots all over it and tasted horrible!
Good one, pvh. So who else has forgotten to take out the little “packet” of innerds from the bird? We did one year, and the packet was made of plastic. It melted and infused the whole turkey (not to mention the whole house) with that burnt plastic smell.
Once, my faimly was so jazzed up to win this online turkey contest, but the winner was never posted. Total disaster!
I was 11 years old when we had a family gathering for Thanksgiving and my aunt, (not a very experienced cook) insisted on making the turkey. It all tasted delicious, but several hours later, most of us started coming down with food poisoning! We were all sick for about 5 days, not even being able to keep down 7-up or water. We later discovered my aunt hadn’t defrosted the turkey properly, leaving it out longer than it should have been. Important lesson learned!
Our first Thanksgiving at our house with the whole family. Dinner was ready and we were putting it all on the table when my father-in-law (had to much Johnny Walker Red) vomits all over his plate. We had to take everything off the table clean up and get rid of the smell before we could eat.
Our family celebrated Thanksgiving plus 7 of Nov. bday celebrants in the family.My brother, his wife and another brother work in the same company. The company traditionally gives out free to turkeys to each staff. So each year we ended up with 2-3 turkeys on the table. Two years ago, the company did not give out the turkeys. Everyone thought that there will be at least one person, my Aunt who will bring the turkey but no one ever confirmed it. Long story short, my aunt showed up at the door and made a side dish…We ended up celebrating Thanksgiving with NO TURKEY on the table, it was so SAD.
Years ago, my non-cook girlfriend (really, she was more like The AntiCook)made a pumpkin pie from scratch for my Thanksgiving dinner. As she carried her contribution proudly up to my front door, a bird in the tree above the walkway took wing – and pooped in the middle of that beautiful dessert. After a couple of stunned seconds, I said, “You know, it looks kinda like whipped cream.” And that was the year I scooped bird poop out of the pumpkin pie and filled the void with whipped cream.