… the never-stops-being-funny routine of us asking the turkey in the fridge if he enjoyed a nice, pampered, fulfilling organic life before his head was chopped off.
… gluten-free cookies which can be turned into gluten-free pie crust, and the way Otto’s face looks when he gets that first whiff of his beloved pumpkin pie in the oven.
… being pounced on with muddy paws, even at inopportune moments, and rewarding that bad behavior with scraps of food.
… both children helping with the rallying cry of “ANOTHER STICK OF BUTTER!” ala Paula Deen (Chickadee’s devotion to artery-clogging mashed potatoes and Monkey’s earnest fake southern accent are both particularly hilarious).
… Thanksgiving reminders that perfection is overrated, and not necessary for gratitude, now or ever. (But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to hear about your memorable holiday disasters, so I hope you’ll come share.)
I am going to be grateful for a nice pleasant stress free flight to see my family. RIGHT!?
I am curious to know what cookies you use for your crest. Are they store bought or homemade?
Happy Thanksgiving!
Butter is a beautiful thing. A gift from the gods, like bacon is.
I am thankful that this year I don’t have to make two separate entire meals. Just one this year, and no turkey! Chickie would LOVE (I think) this years meal. Butternut squash ravioli!
We’re grateful for you, Mir! Happy Thanksgiving to the Mir-Otto-family!
We’re headed to Cabo tomorrow, so it’s enchiladas and tacos (and margaritas and beer for the adults) for everyone on Thursday! We’ll do our typical Thanksgiving foods and sides for Christmas this year.
Share-worthy disaster: One Thanksgiving when I was about 6, my mother–frazzled beyond belief by having both sets of grandparents over for dinner–broke a glass gravy boat into the gravy pan. It seemed strange to me that she was so upset (verging on hysterically crying, really) about not being able to serve gravy, seeing as how it had shards of glass in it.
Of course, now I understand how that can be the proverbial straw.
Nana (mom’s mom) tried to calm her down, which just seemed to make her feel worse. Once we finally sat down to dinner–mom red-nosed and sniffling–Nana continued her campaign by declaring loudly, every few minutes, that she had never had such a nice, most turkey and who needs gravy anyway when there’s such a nice, moist turkey? My brother laughed first. I was a close second. My dad remained stoic until mom finally cracked a smile about the 47th time she said it.
But to this day (38 years later), we cannot eat Thanksgiving dinner without several dozen exclamations of “what a NICE, MOIST turkey…why it doesn’t need any gravy at all!”
Happy Thanksgiving!
You make my heart happy, and I am thankful for you.
BIggest disaster? Barfing due to flu on the Thanksgiving table…which then caused two other people to barf and everyone else to become nauseous and need to go outside in sub-zero temperatures to hyperventilate. Main casualty? Yes. The turkey. And he’d already had to be shot full of hormones since he came from Ralphs.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your family! Be grateful, too, that Otto doesn’t do what my husband does: an excellent turkey gobble imitation. He usually waits until someone opens the oven and then lets ‘er rip! No one has ever burned themselves in the process because we all KNOW he’s going to do this.
I’m thinking this might be a disaster year. The turkey is being brined and glazed. (I’m not cooking it). McDonald’s is always open, right?
The Year the Dishwasher Broke is Thanksgiving Legend in my family. Before we sat down to dinner, my mom started the really full dishwasher. Then something under the sink broke, and water started pouring out of the pipes. For some reason, the dishwasher couldn’t be stopped (this was late 80s), so my dad & his friend had to sit there the entire time with buckets to catch the water.
I think the biggest disaster happened when I was in my early twenties. My mom had, unbeknownst to me and in utter defiance of food safety, put the still-plastic-wrapped turkey in the oven to defrost. MY big project the night before Thanksgiving was to make my orange cappuccino cheesecake. So there I am, mixing and everything. I blithely walk over to the stove and turn the oven on to preheat… with the turkey still inside. Fast forward to about five minutes later, the acrid smell of burning plastic has taken over the whole house, said plastic is welded to the turkey which is, of course, ruined… so we capped off the evening with an emergency run to the grocery store to get an (unfrozen) turkey to replace the ruined one.
Mem’ries… like the corners of my mind….
Happy Thanksgiving to the Mir-Ottos!
I want to know about the cookies to pie crust trick too, come on, give up the GF details!