Not exactly a flub but I was shocked to see my cousin dump the entire roasting pan of juices right down the sink. She’s been hosting for 25 years, it’s a wonder her sink drains anymore!

The year was 1970. My husband was a commercial shrimper, and had just bought a new boat, which was financed by the bank. We were young and poor. Thanksgiving came and we had no money, since all of our money went to boat payments. My husband and I decided to take out the boat, make a couple of drags, sell the shrimp and go out to eat. So we went shrimping. The weather was awful....cold, raining, the water was rough. But we caught shrimp....a lot of shrimp. So we didn't come in until evening. We got to the dock about dark. The fish house, where he sold shrimp, was closed. Nobody there, but they had seen his boat was out, so they had left the cooler unlocked. He unloaded the boat..shrimp are dumped into a water tank and go up a conveyor to the scales, and dumped and iced into boxes that hold 100 lb. I don't remember how many boxes...

I just remember how after being on the boat all day in bad weather, it still felt like I was still on the boat, because it felt like I was still moving, standing still.

My husband was young and strong and did all the work by himself. Not much I could do. The shrimp were iced and boxed and put in the cooler. I don't remember how much money, but around $2,000. But, there was no one there to pay him.

Back then a tv dinner was less than $2.

There was a convenience store open. We counted out our change and bought 2 turkey tv dinners. That was our Thanksgiving. Something truly to be thankful for.

One of my nieces suggested that we each offer our best turkey gobble imitation. That had us all laughing between dinner and dessert.

Our family Thanksgiving dinners would rotate between 4 families. Total humans was 25 and only my maternal aunt had a house - the rest of us were squeezed into small apartments in Queens, NY. One Thanksgiving which was my mom’s turn, she decided to have it catered since her kitchen was so small. Everyone enjoyed the soup and were waiting for the “main event” but my mom didn’t come out of the kitchen.
I went to help her and she frantically said “I can’t find the gravy!” which probably came in one of various Tupperware-type containers, scattered around the countertop and in the sink.
Our detective work discovered that my mom had inadvertently poured the gravy into the soup! When she confessed her error to the awaiting clan, my cousin laughingly said “No wonder I loved the soup Aunt Harriet!”
The hysteria held up dinner for about 20 minutes. And no, we didn’t have any gravy.

My first Thanksgiving dinner with HIS family, his stepmom made the entire dinner. As we sat down for dinner she apologized, saying, "Not everyone likes New England style"....I wondered what I was in for.

The turkey tasted fishy....because the cornbread dressing it was stuffed with had tiny oysters in the dressing! The oysters weren't cleaned. They were gritty...we were literally eating dirt! I asked her, "You didn't clean the oysters?" She said she didn't think she needed to, they were so tiny.

We've been talking about the fishy turkey with oysters ever since. It made quite the impression! 🦃 🤣

For myself, the first time I made a turkey, I left the bag of gizzard, heart, etc. in the bird. I even stuffed it and put it in the oven. I finally realized it and pulled the turkey out, Put the stuffing in a dish while I fished out the bag. I restuffed the turkey and put it back in the oven. Nothing bad happened.

But yesterday I got a text from my neighbor asking if I was home and my oven might be available. She had spilled some of the turkey juice in the oven when her bird was done in the morning. Later when she went make the rolls, the oven started on fire!!!!! Luckily they were able to make everything work out with needing my oven. I don't know what the situation with her oven is today!!

I have often been the extra oven in need for my neighbors. It's nice to be needed.

One year, I was making Ina Garten's make ahead turkey gravy which calls for cognac or brandy. We have some alcoholics in the family so I went looking for a substitute. Understand that I didn't really know how to cook. The Internet said vinegar could be substituted for alcohol in recipes. As you might have guessed, that was the smelliest, most acidic, inedible concoction ever! Luckily, it was the day before the holiday, so I simply made a pan sauce the next day with the turkey drippings, flour and butter. My brother will never let me forget the vinegar boil, though. He said he had never had clearer sinuses than that day in the kitchen.

During our entire long marriage, we have always had Friendsgivings. One year my husband's family came to our house for Thanksgiving. We generally don't spend the holidays with them because we're scattered geographically and travel during Thanksgiving and Christmas is expensive and not much fun - but circumstances happened that year where they could all show up at our place. So this was a first. I hate making gravy so my SIL offered to do it, using the pan drippings. I also don't bake, and for some reason the only flour I had was whole wheat which she used for the roux. It was pretty bad. The good part of it was they never invited themselves back for a repeat, and we went back to Friendsgivings.

I'm really enjoying these 😀!

@nicole.... Oh nicole. the thought of oysters in dressing is bad enough, but dirty too? It sounds horrifying!!

No big mishaps that I recall other than TWO different Thanksgivings, in two different towns where we lived that the power went out and I had to cook dinner on the woodstove. For our city visitors, it was quite an adventure. I think we moved the turkeys to the BBQ and the sides all cooked on the woodstove. It's been many years ago.

But this thanksgiving there were 16 of us at a younger cousin's home and we had a very funny and lively conversation about jello salads. The younger folk were appalled by our stories of the horrible jello concoctions that used to show up on our tables when we oldsters were young. Someone remembered there used to be celery flavored jello and people would put all kinds of veggies into it, including peas. The groans of disgust by the younger folks were so funny. Wanted to know if we actually ate and liked that stuff. I can't believe anyone liked it, nor that it looked appetizing enough to try it.

Well I used to be pretty good at baking but i am out of practice since I don’t cook as much anymore with just the two of us. I made two ‘Texas Trash’ pies for our family Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, one with coconut and one without. It sounded a lot easier than trying to make two different pies since i could use the same ingredients and just compensate a few more chocolate and caramel chips and more pecans for the ’no coconut’ version. The pie also has a cup of crushed pretzels, probably a mild counter to all the sweetness. I generated a pickup order to save a little time getting everything last Monday. Brought it home and put the bags in the pantry without another thought until Wednesday afternoon. I made the first pie, put it in the oven and started putting everything together for the second. When i got started crushing the mini pretzel twists, I realized they were cheese pretzels! OMG!! what now? I sent DH off to get more while I waited. I decided the sweetness would probably overpower any mild taste of cheese pretzel bits so i just let it go. It was a correct assumption. We didn’t tell anyone and you could not taste any difference at all between the 2 pies except for the obvious coconut flavor in the one.

Isn’t Thanksgiving fun!?

Oly, coincidentally, we talked about jello too. I have these parfait glasses from DMIL.

She used to layer red and green Jell-O in these glasses and was so proud of the result.

I don't know that I left the package of giblets in the cavity (my sister did one year) but I did leave the neck which was packed inside bird but outside the bag - whatever that brand had been.

We were cooking at my brothers one year and his wife didn't have a roasting pan large enough to hold the turkey. Those early years, few of us did. She bought one of the disposable pans and in checking the temp of the stuffing, ran the sharp part if the implement though the bird and pan too. We filled that oven door from a leak around it's window. With all of us staying there that weekend we did damage every time we cooked or opened the oven. So grateful they had a kitchen remodel planned that was quite nice.

(we bought a large turkey size roaster too later that weekend. Both of us - I did not have one either)

My neighbor's husband was "helping" in the kitchen and served the gravy as a first course "soup".

Haha^^^^