Thanksgiving Plans

Just wondering whose got the best plans this year?DH and I have done the same thing each year (GONE TO HIS MOMS)if anyone can come up with a good excuse why we should change our rut this year please let me know.Best Ideas welcome!!! Hey gotta go chase bigger birds ya know(ps what to tell MIL) Hey Shoe,ya gotta have one for this one!

This message was edited Thursday, Nov 21st 2:44 AM

plans-we have a 28lb homegrown cornfed turkey to roast and all the yummies to go with it! My 5 boys 2 with girlfriends and my niece from alabama and her dh will be here-we have to eat by 2pm cuz Teig has to work at the casino at 6pm!

***my MIL is going to vegas so i figured(whew)i dont have to invite them as we do christmas eve and day with them!!! My BIL and his twin(hyper)boys live there too! They drive me nuts and crashed our halloween time!!! I try to have just my family for thanksgiving.....well get this one->mil callled to see what i was doing and who was going to be here-she wanted me to add her hubby,son and his 2 kids-i said NO WAY! *how rude* I would never say im going out of town would you feed my family thanksgiving while im on vacation!!! grrrrrrrrrrrr So it will be just MY family again this year!!!!
Good luck weedlady! i just said flat out NO WAY! wait till christmas cuz things will be changing this yr. im not going anywhere on christmas day-nope not going to do it anymore!
It will be all about "new traditions" and staying home and playing with our new toys and I will even COOK!!!
HO HO HO HO!!!! merry christmas n happy thanksgiving!!!

we are going to mama's. really my mother in laws but she is mama to me. do this every year and look forward to it. she is 71 now so i help her cook. i will be taking the turkey, dressing, and gravy and macaroni and cheese.
she will make all of her yummy goodines. peacan pies, punpkin pies and sweet potatoes too. chewy cake, fruit cakes, and a cherry pie. all pies are homemade

I've ordered a 22 lb Amish turkey. I'll be up at 5AM getting that into the roaster stuffed with my homemade bread stuffing. We're taking it over to BIL's & SIL's (Meems Dream)where we'll meet niece and her DH and my daughter and son in law and 2 grandaughters. We'll have so much food it'll be shameful. We will spend the entire day with family. (There might be a minute or 2 to enjoy a football game on the tube.)

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my DG freinds.

Paul

It will be just DH and I as it has been for the last 9 years. He refuses to travel for holidays (not that I blame him, traffic really stinks then) ;) My mom, sister and nieces will be here the day after and for the weekend.

I'll do the usual thanksgiving day...have the parades on, cook and decorate the christmas tree while he is off hunting.

Enjoy going while you can. For about 10 years I made all the fixings for the dinner and then drove 3 hours to my parents where we shared fixin the turkey.
For the past 15 years I am the chief cook and bottle washer.
20 pound turkey (deep fried outside in the cold and probably wet)
8-10 pound standing pork rib roast
oyster stuffing
sage dressing
giblet gravy
mashed potatoes
sweet potatoes
corn souffle
pumpkin pies
chocolate cheesecake
pumpkin cheesecake
and all the other little extras
And they all stay from Wednesday evening until Monday morning so I am "cookin on the front burner" for five days!
I can feel the pain in my neck already LOL!!!

OOPS, forgot to mention will be spending Christmas in Punta Cana so we will also be exchanging gifts at some point between meals LOL!

We're having all the traditional stuff, lots of family, but we are also doing something a little different this year. I have invited a young college student (who can't go home for the holidays) over to our house to join us.

I will be in San Francisco having lobster, my new Thanksgiving tradition.

OK, here's what you do...you tell MIL that you can't come to her house because you have to stay home and cook for this family of 6 that you don't even know. Then I will have an excuse NOT to go to MY MIL's for Thanksgiving! LOL

We are going to DD's in-laws, there are stories about this!
We have never been there. We will have Thanksgiving at our house on Sat. Big bird and all the trimmings.
Three times we have had a fresh dressed turkey,(never frozen), unbeleivable great taste! Very hard to find though.
Best of the holiday to everyone!
Bernie

Hmmmm...I certainly unnerstand the delimma, Weedlady. My DW and DD always go to see her side of the fambly for T-giving...I always stay home to watch the place and tend to the daily chores. (Maybe you could say you are coming to NC to help Horseshoe feed chickens this year!) (And then on Thanksgiving you could say, "Welp, Horseshoe called and said all his chickens croaked...they died from being overly scairt! He was saying something about they grew up thinking they were turkeys!)

And of course you could always decide to take your hubby out to a special one-on-one day...a meal out (where no one has to cook!), a movie, a drive outside the city...(and wear some parfume!)...:>)

We aren't doing anything. My family is going to Fargo to be with my nephew that is in the hospital, and DH's family has other arrangements. So, we have decided to utilize our 4 day weekend and TRY to finish up the sanding, staining and varnishing. We are getting real tired of living in this construction zone, so this is what we need to do in order to have this place somewhat comfortable by Christmas. Carpet and linoleum in a couple rooms at least. Since the kids are all going to their other parent's for the holiday, I might see if I can find some rubber duckies, (cornish game hens), on sale to stuff for DH and I.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!
Joan

Since I volunteer at a Widows Suppport Center...and we are closed Thanksgiving day...we ladies decided to cook our own dinner that day.....I have two DD's near by but this way they can all go out to eat in good concience!!...and we ladies will have fun at the center. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!! Jo

Whatever you do...............have the very bestest, family time and Thanksgiving!!!!

"eyes"

.............love this!

Just got a call yesterday from my youngest son who will be coming to spend Thanksgiving with us. He lives about 400 miles from here, so I would have understood if he wanted to wait and visit us at Christmas. My other son will be joining us, as well, as will two of their friends, so we'll be six for dinner. Dennis smokes the turkey for awhile to give it a special flavor, then sticks it in the oven for several hours. He stuffs it with his "Portugese Dressing" that has no sage, but cumin, instead. I'll bake the pies and the braided egg bread the day before.

When I was a young adult, with two small children, my hubby and I would go to my mother & dad's house for Thanksgiving. After dinner, we'd all head into the livingroom to snooze on the couch or in a comfy chair. My mother would wait until we were all asleep, then sneak out into the kitchen to tackle the huge pile of dishes. I know I should have jumped up to help, but it was so luxurious lying there half asleep listening to the the chinking sounds of dishes in the rack, knowing my mother was still taking care of things. I don't think she minded. Thanksgiving was her gift to us all.

man oh man! (er, woman oh woman!) What a great memory you have there, Weezin. I can just feel it!

A nice comfort there, eh?

Yes, I don't know if we ever have that feeling of being taken care of like that after we become the caregivers. I'd like to think my grown kids feel the same way when they visit.

Portugese stuffing-im portugese please send me reciepe!
i only know how to make agadouge(SP)poached eggs in garlic!
memories are the BEST

any more portugese reciepes?

notmartha: I'll ask my DH to give you instructions. I don't think he has a written down. Dennis learned how to make it from his mother who learned how to make it from her mother-in-law. I'll catch him this evening to dictate it to me and I'll post. As for other recipes, I'll ask, but he probably doesn't have much.

So, WEEDLADY(!)...
What did ya come up with? YOu goin' or not? What excuse or REASON didja come up with? I gotta know!

As for Portugese recipes, Notmartha...I have one called "Portugese pickled onions"...yummy.

could u send it shoe??
im game for anything linked to my "kin".

did ya'll see my homegrown turkey?

Beginning on Thanksgiving Day at one in the afternoon, my wife Karen and I are hosting 25 guests at our home in an apartment tower overlooking the Hudson River, peering west at the rest of America. This is a lot of work, and preparations begin days ahead of time. Why do we take this on, and what benefit is there is this expenditure of energy and money?

For many of us in New York City, life changed dramatically one beautiful late~summer morning last year. So many of us were left rootless, confused, alone or with families transformed by inexplicable events. Of course political noise tries to fill that vacuum, but does nothing to answer the callings of the heart.

"My God, Thanksgiving already, what am I going to do with the children?" a friend cried into the phone. "We always went to Bermuda for the holiday, I don't have anywhere to go," said another. And there were other calls, emails, from friends who had lost a husband, a wife or a child.

And so it began..., my wife's offer of opening our home to friends and the families of work colleagues as a place to celebrate together our thanks that things weren't as bad as they might have been, to celebrate that the sun does come up the next morning despite the heap of still smoking rubble into which our friends, relatives and work colleagues had vanished while anthrax crept through the mails.

Overwhelming guilt at still being alive and unscathed while so many around be were injured or had perished was lightened by the simple repetitive tasks of assembling a handcrafted meal for over two dozen people. I wasn't even interested in going back to work; I had been thinking of leaving, anyway. Cooking gave me something to do.

Our 2001 Thanksgiving was rather somber, yet also celebratory. Each guest was asked to bring white flowers as a token. Later, each guest in turn read a short poem or a joyous memorial to the life of a loved one or a person especially admired. After each had served himself or herself from our offered buffet of main courses, we held hands in silent prayer around our dining table. Twenty seven people..., Catholic, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist..., born in many places around the world, all bound together by our shared life in and love of New York City.

And this year we are doing it again..., with the guest list slightly changed, but the intention intact..., to join hands around the table, the bounty of our good fortune arrayed before us, and show that this is an eternal city, that we remain unbowed, and grateful for the gifts life brings.

Adam.

Adam....what can one say after a tribute like that? How wonderful of you and your wife...and I know that you reap many benefits from this act of kindness...such as receiving the love and thanks of your fellow man! This is truly what Thnaksgiving is all about. Jo

"eyes"

Adam, I have tears in my eyes after reading your post. It is so wonderful that you & your wife are doing in this and I know GOD is pleased too. I'll keep you in prayer that this year's celebration will be filled with love, compassion, joy, and the celebration of life itself as well as the blessings GOD has given each of you.
Jack, Kyle and I will be alone Thursday as Shad will be with his mother and his & stepfather. He always has the choice of where to spend holidays and such and there is no animosity except on his stepfathers part. Anyway, we will have our tradional breakfast of sausage English Monkey, cranberry bread and orange juice & coffee. Lunch will likely be a sausage biscuit roll with sausage gravy, some veggies, sugar free apple dessert of some kind, and a cake or pie for Kyle's birthday. A lot of sausage that day but we only use really lean stuff that is made locally. You have to spray or use oil in a nonstick pan to keep it from sticking.
GOD bless and keep each and all of you.

Adam, what a wonderful story. Thank you for sharing it.

Adam,
You and your wife are an example to all of us to what this holiday truely means.
Thanksgiving Blessings to your family and the people that you have touched.

Adam, I hadn't read this until now, but I also am very deeply moved by your writing. ((( hugs ))) from the whole family.