Thanksgiving Mishaps

My mom made a HUGE pan of candied yams that had pineapple in them. She put them in a disposable foil pain to transport & bake in. Yeah, the pinapple reacted with the aluminum & turned the potatoes all blackish & highly unappetizing. Nobody ate them.

This isn't a huge mishap but it was a pain in the butt when it happened. For whatever reason I miscounted the number of guests we had coming. I apparently did it a number of times as I always settled on the same wrong number, which I didn't discover until everyone was being seated. At that point I had to dig out 2 more place settings of everything which wasn't easy to get to because it was all the "good stuff" - meanwhile my guests felt a little embarrassed as if they were party crashers. From now on, I write down everyone's name and just like Santa, make a list and check it twice or three times!

Happy Thanksgiving all -

Amy

Love this!

Don't forget that you can always call the Butterball turkey hotline for help! I laughed so hard when I first heard about that, but then a few years ago I was thankful for it. I didn't take the turkey out early enough to defrost and was in a panic when I realized that no way would it be done in time. I called the hotline and they talked me thru it..and talked me down lol.

Then there was the year that MIL's turkey wasn't finished and she decided to try and microwave it to "cook it the rest of the way thru". *eyeroll*

One year I was baking the turkey in a new oven. The turkey should have been done according to how long it had been in the oven, but it was not. Allthe guests were arriving. I kept allowing it to cook longer and longer until all the food everyone else brought was going cold. So I whispered to my husband, just cut off the parts of the turkey that are fully cooked! So he did. Later, after all guests had gone, he wrapped that sucker up in foil and baked it at least another hour until it was finally cooked. Omg. We got out the oven instructions and adjusted the factory settings as apparently it was too low.

My worst mishap happened only a few hours ago. I haven't quite gotten over it. I was baking a couple of pies to bring to my son's house. As I took the apple pie out of the oven and turned to put it on the counter, I managed to lose my hold on the pie and it flipped over and landed splat on the floor. I screamed (involuntarily) and my husband came running into the kitchen, thinking I had burned myself. The pie was a total loss, though I admit to tasting some of the filling after I scooped it off my once-clean floor (it was yummy and would have been a delicious pie). Cleaning up that sticky mess took longer than assembling all the pie ingredients! Thankfully, the pumpkin pie made it out of the oven intact.

These are so great! Seriously having a good laugh over here

I haven't celebrated a traditional TG since I was a teen.... Your stories are reminding me why! lol

The last one I remember, my Grandfather decided to make fresh cranberry sauce. Evidently, pages of his cookbook were stuck together so he spliced recipes together and added horseradish and worshteshire sauce to the cranberries! The only person that ate them AND asked for seconds was the drunk lady my Mom had invited from her work! The rest of us quietly deposited them in our napkins.

One Thanksgiving many years ago my mother was preparing dinner and discovered she had no tin foil (this was before stores were open on Thanksgiving) but she'd read somewhere you could cook a turkey in a paper grocery bag. That may work, but unfortunately we were having duck that year. That did not work so well. Duck is much greasier than turkey and so the entree burst into flames, was rescued by my father who threw it in the sink and doused out the flames, thus we had our first and only meat free/just the side dishes Thanksgiving.

I started doing every Thanksgiving at my house shortly thereafter. One year I had 28 friends/family in for Thanksgiving about 1/2 of which were under the age of 12. This was not a kitchen mishap, but just a very bad idea! Never again. LOL.

This is the first year in 30+ years I've not done a big family Thanksgiving and I feel kind of sad about that (the end of a long tradition) but also a bit relieved. We are going to my son-in-law's parents' (my daughter's husband's parents) as they graciously offered to do Thanksgiving this year since I wasn't sure how I'd feel. I'm bringing wine and Paleo pumpkin custard. That's it. Actually, I'm liking this plan pretty well.

first time i hosted I left the bag of giblets (in the plastic bag) in the turkey the entire time it was in the oven - can you say plastic poisoning!

These are great! My family usually orders everything prepared from a restaurant, so no mishaps that I can remember.

This isn't really a mishap, but the first year we lived together my husband and I planned a quiet Thanksgiving for just the two of us. The parents of a friend raised and sold turkeys and offered a few days before Thanksgiving to give us one of their birds that hadn't sold. When they brought it over It turned out to be a 20 pounder! Neither of us had ever cooked a turkey before and it barely fit into our small apartment oven. Somehow though it turned out great. We froze most of it and ate turkey sandwiches forever!

Great stories!! I have no funny stories to add & it's not Thanksgiving here, so no stress & no frantic house cleaning. But I wanted to say thanks for the laughs & Happy Thanksgiving to all my neighbours (Canadian spelling!) to the south. Dee

Great stories!

Well, mine involves one of the first Thanksgivings I hosted after I got married. Unbeknownst to me, my built in oven had developed a short in the wiring. The oven was hot when I put the turkey in, but then I got busy and didn't realize (until shortly before the guests arrived), that at some point the oven had quit cooking....I had a half raw bird & company coming in about half an hour!!! I hacked off chunks of turkey and started running them through the microwave. Not a very great taste. Did the same with the stuffing. Luckily I had purchased canned gravy in advance (in case mine didn't turn out). Nothing tasted very good....but at least nobody got food poisoning!