So in our quest to find that balance between the awesomeness that is MommyLand and the awesomeness that is our families, Kate and Lydia will be taking this week off to But we do have a mission before you before we go...mostly inspired by the whacktacular dishwasher turkey that Kate's mother-in-law fixed last year. And while we wouldn't call the Dishwasher Turkey a FAIL, it was still pretty insane-in-the-membrane to look for a clean coffee cup and finding dinner steaming away in the top rack.
So, bring us your Thqnksgiving FAILS, whether it's a centerpiece made by one of your kids, a cake gone wrong...or something else that makes you happy that, if you eat enough turkey, you can just sleep through the rest of the day.
We'll post our favorites...Happy Thanksgivng, y'all. Bring on the triptophan.
xoxo Kate and Lydia
(c)Herding Turtles, Inc. 2009 - 2011
I cooked my first turkey with a friend when I couldn't go home for Thanksgiving. Everything was going well, but at the time the turkey was supposed to be done, the temperature was still too low. Gave it some more time, still not hot enough. After over an hour of extra time and frustration, with the side dishes overcooking, I called my mom (of course). She thought it should be done and said to wiggle the leg, which fell off. So the turkey was done. And that is why you should never buy a meat thermometer at a garage sale.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea what will go wrong this year, something inevitably does. The first year that I cooked Thanksgiving was right when my husband came home from his first deployment of 15 months...needless to say I had the ENTIRE family in my 1100 square foot apartment. Complete with me, mom in law, mom, and two grandmothers. I overstuffed the turkey, and as a result we had uncooked stuffing and a partially cooked bird. Everyone laughed, but I was super upset!
ReplyDeleteThqnksgiving FAILS!!!
ReplyDeleteA couple of years ago, my sister-in-law and I cooked a turkey for the first time at our family cabin. We both checked up the usual orifice for the giblets, and scoped all around in there, and they were NOT in there! So we proceeded to cook that turkey. When that sucker was done, we went ahead & carved it. Sure 'nuff, we found those giblets down the NECK end! Sneaky turkey.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't my FAIL but my mother's. Not long after her and my father were married she was asked to make the pumpkin pie. She had never made it before but knew everyone said it wasn't that hard. So she made the pie, brought it to my Grandmother's for dinner and when it was time for dessert everyone dug in. And it was awful!! When my grandmother asked her how she made it my mother replied with "I bought a pie crust and dumped in a can of pumpkin and baked it." She never added anything to the pumpkin!!! It was so bad even the dog wouldn't eat it!!
ReplyDeleteOne year, someone decided it would be funny to bring a pack of Jones soda.... in the "Thanksgiving dinner" flavors. Since most of us had already consumed a fair amount of wine, we decided to do shots of the flavored soda. Dear God.... brussel sprouts should NEVER, EVER be turned into a fizzy beverage!
ReplyDeleteCan I just say how ironically awesome it is that you mis-spelled Thanksgiving in the phrase "Thanksgiving FAILS" :) lol
ReplyDeleteMy fail was actually my aunt's. She has made the same basic menu every Thanksgiving including FOUR batches of this amazing sweet potatoes casserole. Everyone eats 4-5 helpings of it by the end of the week for breakfsat, lunch and dinner. One year she actually decided (like thought about it and came to a decision, not just forgot) to NOT MAKE IT. There was nearly a mutiny.
At an early Thanksgiving dinner at my mother-in-law's, she set a blank piece of paper in front of every place so that we could all write down something we were thankful for. My 9-year-old nephew, having just seen the new Puss in Boots movie and being obsessed with it as only he could, simply wrote "Puss". Needless to say, their was much laughing-so-hard-we-were-crying-into-our-napkins at the end of the meal when these were read allowed by Grandma.
ReplyDeleteThis has happened EVERY Thanksgiving without fail:
ReplyDeleteSCENE: In the kitchen of my Uncle's
Me, looking in the oven at the gorgeous turkey - "Hey, I think the turkey might be done!"
Uncle: "Let's check!" pulls the bird out and whips out a thermometer that kind of looks like something they use at the gyno's office (which no one knows who even makes it or where he got it), check's the turkey "It's done!"
Hans (aka Dr. Feltersnatch): Pulls on a pair of rubber gloves and starts carving the turkey only to find that it's raw in the middle
Uncle: "I don't understand it! There must be something wrong with the oven, it HAS to be the oven, I gotta replace this thing!" Whips the bird back in the oven "Maybe it's because I iced the breasts, you know putting ice on the breasts keeps them from getting overdone!"
Commence with boob jokes the rest of the evening
SCENE
Every. Single. Thanksgiving. I just sit back with my vodka with a splash of eggnog and enjoy the show :-P
My Senior year of HS my adopted sister and I (of the same age) insisted to my mom that she let US do everything for dinner. We should have realized it was a bad idea when making the menu and shopping each of us ONLY wanted to do our own ideas for recipes. So $500 and doubles of fairly similar dishes later we had everything mixed up and waiting in the fridge for the big day. On THAT day, my older brother showed up with a box set of drinking games and equipped with a couple trays of jello shots. Many others got involved in the game also and sometime around 6 pm my mom finally realized that no one had started cooking anything hours before....dinner ended up being about 9 or 10 pm that year :S oooooops!!
ReplyDeleteHappy thanksgiving, Mommyland! xo
ReplyDeleteMy sister and her boyfriend were coming over for Thanksgiving dinner along with his grandparents. Well he went to pick up his grandparents and my sister and I were cooking. We put on the yams to boil and then went upstairs as my sister wanted to look through and take back to her place some of our family Christmas ornaments. Needless to say we lost track of time and all the water boiled out of the pan and the yams burned and set the smoke alarm off. I was living in a condo at the time and I just thank my lucky stars that all the attached condo's alarms weren'e attached otherwise I would have had to explain my Thanksgiving fail to all my neighbors. Everyone wondered what that burnt smell was all through dinner. LOL
ReplyDeleteJrseygirl in VA
Can you post the link for the dishwasher turkey?? :)
ReplyDeleteMy stepmom is awesome and invites EVERYONE to holidays, so you get a mix of her and my dad, my mom, my stepmom's ex-husband and various other people that may or may not still be related but it makes everything so easy since you go to ONE place. It is pretty amazing that everyone can celebrate together. Annnnyhow, last year at the table during a lull in conversation my Mom said VERY VERY LOUDLY " I like the dark meat." And so it was very quiet. And then Mom said " I DO, I like the DARK MEAT! WHY IS EVERYONE SO QUIET? I CAN'T BE THE ONLY ONE HERE THAT LIKES DARK MEAT." And then we were all snickering because we are immature. She would not stop but no one wanted to explain at the holiday table in front of our 10 year old nephews why that was funny.
ReplyDeleteEvery so ofter she will wonder out loud why we laughed and I for one am not gonna be the one to tell her.
My adorable June Cleaver amazing cook of a grandma has - not once, but TWICE- forgot the sugar in the pumpkin pie. Tame compared to burning a house down deep-frying a turkey, but not a great way to finish dinner.
ReplyDeleteLiving overseas, I've gotten used to things not always being as they "should". Eight years ago, I cooked a turkey with a friend for Thanksgiving dinner. We looked in all the crevices of the turkey and just couldn't find the sack of innards! We finally gave up, and just cooked the thing. As we were carving the turkey, lo' and behold, there were the innards, tucked way up inside. And I must say, it was one of the juiciest and best turkeys I ever cooked! Maybe that's the secret.....leave the innards in!!
ReplyDeleteMu brother in law deep fried a turkey once, it was a total disaster. Think skeletal carcass with a little rubber clinging to it.
ReplyDeleteAnother year, my sister's oven died when we put the turkey in. SO we ended up at her neighbors house all day (neighbor was away but we did ask, LOL) cooking the turkey.
When I was 3, my mom was cooking Thanksgiving dinner. I asked what was in the oven, and she replied "A big bird". I freaked out because I thought she was cooking BIG BIRD.
ReplyDeleteCooked my first turkey upside down. Good news: it was so tender from cooking in its own juices that it fell off the bone. Bad news: we ruined the carving knife trying to cut into its back before we realized it was upside down. Now when I cook any bird I literally have to stand it up and walk it around and picture it living to figure out which is the front and which is the back. And, of course, I have to make the bird noises while I do it just to make the experience complete...
ReplyDeleteMy mom dropped the pan with the turkey drippings one year while cleaning up after dinner. The turkey grease splashed up from the floor, all over her face, and even onto the ceiling. My cousin saw her drop it and heard her cursing, but didn't realize it was cool. He thought she'd just burned her face off with hot grease. After he recovered from the shock, he was so impressed that he drew a picture of her with turkey grease all over the place.
ReplyDeleteIt's become part of our T-day mythology, and we retell the story every year. My only regret is that I was living overseas that year and didn't get to witness the Great Turkey Spill!
My husband is half Filipino. His mom and Aunt grew up in the Philippines. So something about Thanksgiving just gets lost in translation. They understand there's supposed to be a LOT of food but don't seem to get that it's supposed to be a certain kind of food. The first year I went to Thankgiving at his Aunt's house, she served tacos, rice, hamburgers, and egg rolls. It all tasted great with the pumpkin pie I brought! :)
ReplyDeleteIt's a Filipino Thanksgiving, Charlie Brown!
Our biggest Thanksgiving fail was last year. My 3-year-old caught a stomach bug 2 days before Thanksgiving. He only threw up a few times on Tuesday, but still had no appetite and wasn't himself Wednesday. We made the 3 hour trip to Granny and Grandpa's without needing the barf bucket we brought along, so we thought we were out of the woods. Went to the hubby's aunt and uncle's for the huge family gathering. He didn't eat much and spent most of the day dozing on the couch. The problem was he was carrying the Bubonic Plague and we had no idea. The next morning, Hubby and I were both sick as dogs. We were in good company - Hubby's Grandma, dad, sister, brother-in-law, uncle, aunt, 3 cousins, and his cousin's 1-year-old daughter were all down for the count too.
ReplyDeleteSorry there isn't any photographic evidence for that fail. Trust me, you're better off that way.
Not that Kate and Lydia are not Uber-awesomeness personified, but I have to admit I sometimes enjoy the comments as much as the posts!! Happy Thanksgiving y'all!!
ReplyDeleteOh yes. This was my husbands Aunt's major fail.
ReplyDeleteThe background: Hub's Aunt could burn water. That is all.
So we were all surprised when she announced that she was going to be cooking the T-day goodness. Showed up at Aunts house at the specified time, I noticed a funny smell in the air. Thinking nothing of it (who am I to point out strange smells? LOL) we sat down and watched Aunt dig into the bird. Funny smell got stronger.
She then proceded to pull something out of the turkey where the yummy stuffing should have been, mind you, .. a dirty, cooked washcloth. Yes Ma'am, she washed the turkey before she cooked it, left the washcloth in and forgot the stuffing. Yesser. (BTW I now question strange smells)
The following aren't my fails (I'm no Gwyneth, but my fails aren't as fun as these....)
ReplyDeleteMy mother-in-law was newly married to my father-in-law "back in the day." He said he loved cherry pie, so one day she decided to make him one from scratch. He took his first bite and chomped on a pit. Oops... who knew the cherries needed to be de-pitted??? He was a good man and proceeded to eat (and spit out pits through) the rest of the pie.
My sister decided to make her (then boyfriend) a pumpkin pie in college. She took it out of the oven and it looked so pretty! When they cut through the top crust it was all soupy inside. Yup, top crust. She put a bottom and top crust on pumpkin pie. Oops!
:) Happy Thanksgiving!!!
PS - LOVE the anonymous post about the paper and Puss in Boots. Hilarious!!
I like to think of this as Thanksgiving brilliance. We were having Thanksgiving with another family. My mom and the other mom were in the kitchen cooking. Well, seems they were getting pretty deep into the wine as well.
ReplyDeleteMark, the guy from the other family, starts teasing my mom about lumps in the gravy. This goes on for a while. He just did not know when to give up. My mom finally got so fed up (and drunk) that she grabbed the neck of the turkey and yells across the house "Hey Mark! Here's what I'd do if you were my husband!" She then proceeds to feed the turkey neck down the garbage disposal!! As a then 14 year old girl, I had new found respect for my mom after that!
Hysterically laughing at the Filipino thanksgiving. Love my Filipino relatives and coworkers.
ReplyDeleteAlso the washcloth!!
The year is 2000, the setting, middle of the Midwest, at the home of my nearing ninety grandparents. My mother's side of the family has gathered for Thanksgiving dinner, and we are awaiting the arrival of my cousin's girlfriend.
ReplyDeleteMy immediate family had not met her before, but she had been to my grandparents several times. We were waiting...and waiting...and waiting, and finally my cousin said we should go ahead and eat, she must have gotten held up somewhere.
We're in the middle of dinner, when she comes waltzing in. We ask where she has been.
Nonchalantly, she says, "Oh, I was next door."
Evidently, she got to the neighborhood and got mixed up of which house she was to go to. People were going in and out of the house next door, so she just followed them. She went right in, sat down, and was making herself right at home. After a little bit, she realized she wasn't seeing her boyfriend, or any of his family.
These two older ladies were eyeing her and asked her, "Honey, are you looking for someone?" She told them she was looking for her boyfriend, had they seen him? Not only had they not seen him, they hadn't a clue who he was. She finally got smart enough to ask, "Is this 234 East Street?" Nope, it was 236 East Street. They were kind enough to walk her next door.
Of course I had to ask if she didn't notice the drastic changes that must have taken place there since she had been there last. The two houses are as different as can be. My grandparents is big and brick, with 70s decor. The neighbors is white with a big porch and had been updated since the Nixon administration. She said she had noticed, but had just assumed my grandparents had done some remodeling.
Honey, I tell her, my grandparents are 89 and 87. I am sorry, but the wood paneling and shag carpeting is here FOR GOOD. It's not going anywhere. We all have to live with it.
When we left, I was sure that was the last we'd see of her, but if he didn't go and marry the damn girl. They were married two years and then proceeded to have the nastiest divorce ever that still rears it's ugly head ten years later. Lesson learned: No good can come from marrying a girl who eats holiday meals at the wrong house.
It was my and new husbands first Thanksgiving.. we were without children (that JOY would not come for three years.. ) and we were in our first home.. an aging condo with 30 year old appliances.
ReplyDeleteWe decide to make our first turkey together-lovey dovey togetherness and all that. We preheat the lovely oven and put the defrosted bird in.
Well, about five minutes into cooking our lovely turkey.. we hear a loud ZAP, crackling sound and smell smoke. The heating element on the bottom of the oven cracked in half which caused a fire in the oven.
So while we put out the fire, we sheepishly call our family and ask if we can come!
I can't even think...I am so dazzled by the beauteousness of the world's cleanest dishwasher.
ReplyDeleteIt is a sight to behold, dear ladies...
My Grandma and I have a co-FAIL,
ReplyDeleteThe first time I brought a boy home for Thanksgiving was the year I was 21. Coconut cream pie was his favorite, so it was added to the menu. I wanted to show off my mad cooking skills, but I had never made this particular pie. So Grandma is telling me what to do, step by step, the same way she has taught me to cook everything else. Now, Grandma is Gwyneth in the kitchen, everything is always perfect. Maybe I'm biased. That being said, she "forgot" to have me thicken the pie filling in the sauce pan before pouring it in the crust, adding the meregue and baking. The pie came out of the oven looking like it should win an award. The merengue and coconut flakes were perfectly toasted. I proudly cut into the pie to serve boyfriend his piece, and it was like milk in the center. Boyfriend was a champ and didn't even laugh at me, though he had to eat his pie with a soup spoon.
I still wonder sometimes if Grandma didn't accidentally-on-purpose forget to thicken that darn pie.
ok, hilarious!!
ReplyDeletehttp://2bestfriendschubbyroadtoskinny.blogspot.com/
When my oldest was little, the first time he saw a whole cooked turkey he called it a dinosaur. He refused to eat if we called it turkey.
ReplyDeleteWe had dinosaur for a couple years on Thanksgiving. I bet not many people can say that!
I left buying a frozen turkey too late, so I thought to leave it out a couple hours at a time to avoid food poisoning. While it was out I didn't want my kitties snacking on it so I put it in the oven. About an hour later, I started making cookies (yes I preheated the oven).
ReplyDeleteWHen I went to put the cookies in to bake, there was a half frozen turkey with the plastic wrap melted into it.
*This is the night before
So HUbby goes to store and comes back with THE MOST ENORMOUS FROZEN TURKEY (eventually took 8 days to thaw in fridge)
so off to another store I go and lucky for eveyone, I found a fresh turkey. It was delicious!
This happened 10 years ago but everyone still refers to my 3 - turkey Thanksgiving!!
My husband was in the Philippines one year over Thanksgiving when someone thought they would make a nice thanksgiving meal for him and his friends. He said it smelled a little weird but looked good so they went to eat and it was like turkey gum!!! Their hosts had boiled the turkey!!!!! Yummy!!!
ReplyDeleteYep. Still DYING from the "Puss" comment. Bwahahahahahahahaha!!!
ReplyDeleteAllergic Vegetarian here...
ReplyDeleteOne year, my dad cooked that turkey for many many hours, and that turkey just wouldn't cook. The oven had died. I forget what we ended up doing, but I think he started up the grill and cooked the bird in pieces outside in the snow. I can't eat Turkey, so I make my own "faux" turkey using Tofu.
So this is my mom's thanksgiving fail: she grew up in Spain and just never really had a whole turkey before she married my dad. Now since my dad is American my mom wanted to make a turkey for thanksgiving and between her and her parents they were convinced that before you cook the turkey you have to close it up, this was their first turkey ever so my grandpa decided to staple it closed.... well my dad being the good sport that he is caught this all on tape and let them do it and ate that turkey anyway
ReplyDeleteThis is my mom's fail -- one year, when I was young enough not to remember, she noticed that her broccoli cheese casserole looked really nice - glossy! After all the guests were finished, and she was cleaning up, she found remnants of melted saran wrap along the edge of the dish and realized the reason for glossy topping! None of us will ever forget to remove the plastic wrap before baking again!
ReplyDeleteMy brother, grandmother and I prepare the turkey, mashed potatoes, and green beans for 35-40 relatives and friends each year. Our fail has nothing to do with the turkey--it is the best potato peeler in the world. It skims off just the topmost layer of the peel. However, it has one fault. Move your finger or thumb too close, and it shaves off the top of said finger or thumb. You'd think we'd learn the first time, but no.
ReplyDeleteWe don't do Thanksgiving in Australia, and a lot of us don't even eat turkey EVER. My girl asked me the other day what turkey is, and I told her it was like Nasty Chicken.
ReplyDeleteBut I like reading Thanksgiving blog posts!
My husband, my dear, sweet BUMBLING husband, threw away my fried onions. Thanks for that, babe. Green bean casserole FAIL!
ReplyDeleteMy Thanksgiving fail: The first time I was to cook the whole "she-bang" for my in-laws, I didn't realize the innards of the turkey were in a neatly wrapped plastic bag inside the bird! I cooked it with the plastic inside and didn't know until the roasted goodness was being pulled out of the oven and "something" was sticking out of the hole. WHOOPS! Yeah - we ate it anyway and told no-one. I finally came clean to my mother-in-law this year about it. Apparently eating a turkey with cooked plastic isn't bad for you. And the turkey tasted fine. :-)
ReplyDeleteLast year I was put in charge of bringing sweet potato casserole. It's pretty much everyone's favorite thing, so I was kind of nervous and waited until the last possible second to make it. I threw everything together and added a little extra vanilla extract, because who doesn't like a little extra vanilla extract? About half a second after it splashed into the bowl, the smell of toothpaste filled the house. It wasn't vanilla extract. It was mint extract. A lot of it. I was 4 months pregnant at the time and so my hormone-riddled reaction was to sit down on the floor and cry. My husband, bless him, scraped some of the mint off the top and finished it for me just in time to walk out the door. My mom was the only one who tried it. She hates mint more than almost anything, but she choked it down. She said it tasted like toothpaste. This year no one asked me to bring anything.
ReplyDeleteTwo funny ones -- first we were putting the turkey into the bag to cook it and the bag broke and the turkey slipped away, under the stove. we retrieved it and cooked it. second, my dear husband put the carved turkey onto a platter to keep it warm, in the oven, the platter was not oven proof and it shattered. keeping calm, I did not freak out, and we ate the turkey (avoiding the part by the broken platter) and it was fine and no one got sick.
ReplyDeleteOMG so I attempted to make sweet potato pies...and they tasted like crap. Seriously, they tasted like something my 3 year old makes in the backyard. So I totally went to the store and got 2 Mrs. Smith's pies and passed them off as my own. I have a younger sister who is the better EVERYTHING..and i couldn't let her think I couldn't make pie!
ReplyDeleteI wanted to show off my mad cooking skills, but I had never made this particular pie.
ReplyDeleteFirstClass Foods Inc