I cooked turkey and most of Thanksgiving dinner for nearly 47 or 48 years. Last year I bought the whole shebang already cooked and rolled the feast through the front door. Sure saves a lot of man hours and effort. Might be my age that’s slowing down the gourmet in my soul.
Both my grandmothers were fabulous cooks, mom too. I loved to watch them cook and always hung out in the kitchen waiting for a “…..here, taste this,” comment. My grandmother Derby, from up near Charlottesville, Va., made the most delicious pancakes ever. They were smallish in diameter. You could only stack seven or eight. I have her old recipe book with her cherished handwriting with delights written in the early 1900’s.
This Thanksgiving instead of dreading the possible difference of family opinions, why not share funny stories. Everyone has their favorite.
I have a friend who once cooked their Thanksgiving turkey with the giblets wrapped in plastic still inside the bird. Who hasn’t done that? I used to thaw our frozen turkey in the bathtub, still wrapped of course. I got that idea from a couple of airline flight attendants in my Atlanta apartment complex who were cooking for half the people who lived there.
Enjoy these Thanksgiving Day quotes and don’t argue:
- “Dear Lord, I’ve been asked, nay commanded, to thank Thee for the Thanksgiving turkey before us—a turkey which was no doubt a lively, intelligent bird, a social being, capable of actual affection, nuzzling its young with almost human-like compassion. Anyway, it’s dead and we’re gonna eat it.” – Berkeley Breathed, Bloom County
- “I hate turkeys. If you stand in the meat section at the grocery store long enough, you start to get mad at turkeys. There’s turkey ham, turkey bologna, turkey pastrami. Someone needs to tell the turkey, man, just be yourself.” – Mitch Hedberg
- “It has been an unchallengeable American doctrine that cranberry sauce, a pink goo with overtones of sugared tomatoes, is a delectable necessity of the Thanksgiving board and that turkey is uneatable without it.” – Alistair Cooke
- “It took me three weeks to stuff the turkey. I stuffed it through the beak.” – Phyllis Diller
- “Most turkeys taste better the day after; my mother’s tasted better the day before.” – Rita Rudner
- ”Thanksgiving is the day when you turn to another family member and say, ‘How long has Mom been drinking like this? My mom, after six Bloody Marys looks at the turkey and goes, ‘Here, kitty, kitty.’” – David Letterman
- “I can’t cook a Thanksgiving dinner. All I can make is cold cereal and maybe toast.” – Charlie Brown
- “When I was a kid in Indiana, we thought it would be fun to get a turkey a year ahead of time and feed it and so on for the following Thanksgiving. But by the time Thanksgiving came around, we sort of thought of the turkey as a pet, so we ate the dog. Only kidding. It was the cat.” – David Letterman
- “Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie.”
- “Thanksgiving dinners take 18 hours to prepare. They are consumed in 12 minutes. Half-times take 12 minutes. This is not a coincidence.” – Erma Bombeck
- “Thanksgiving is an emotional time. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they see only once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often.” – Johnny Carson
- “We’re having something a little different this year for Thanksgiving. Instead of a turkey, we’re having a swan. You get more stuffing.” – George Carlin
- “Last Thanksgiving, I shot my own turkey. It was fun. That shotgun going, Blam! Everybody at the supermarket just staring. Why track them when I know where they are?” – Kenny Rogerson
- “I don’t eat pumpkin pie. It’s made from the guts of jack-o-lanterns, and that’s just spooky.” – Melanie White
- “You know that just before the first Thanksgiving, there was one wise old Native American woman saying, ‘Don’t feed them. If you feed them, they’ll never leave.’” – Dylan Brody
- “They should change the name of Thanksgiving to something more fitting like say, Turkeypocolypse or Stuffing-cide.”
