The Official Thanksgiving Thread

[Mistermoonlight]

Here's a place for us to share our plans for the holiday, what we love, what we hate, our favorite foods and recipes, and of course, what we are thankful for. So, have at it.

I'll start things off. It seems like decades and decades ago, but last year at this time we were still at the CW Lounge (I can't remember whether the spam attacks had started by Thanksgiving or not.)

That means this is our first Thanksgiving together as a group, in our own place. I'm thankful we found a way to all remain together and thrive. Basically we said 'in your face' to the CW when they tried to destroy the relationships we've enjoyed together for such a long time.

I'm thankful for you, each and every person here. You've made my life richer than you'll ever know. I've never seen the kind of courage and love I see here, and certainly not the wit.

You make me better every day.

Thank you.

[melissa1978]

my family we are going to my aunts in westchester county ny for thanksgiving,...my two favorite things are cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes I only eat mash potatoes on thanksgiving,...


I'm thankful for my family, friends, my dog Tootie , my job with kids and my,life.

[Mistermoonlight]

I want to tell you a big secret about mashed potatoes. There's a way to make them so excellent that people will stagger in ecstasy. Here it is:

From Ann Hodgeman's amazing cookbook, "Beat This":


4 large baking potatoes
4 large cloves of garlic unpeeled
1/2 stick unsalted butter
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1/4 cup milk
salt to taste

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Stab those potatoes with one of those great potato-baking nails. Put the garlic cloves on a piece of aluminum foil on the rack.

After 1/2 hour of baking, check the garlic cloves, if softened enough, remove them, if not, give them another 15 minutes. Once out of the oven, squeeze the pulp into a bowl and add the butter.

Check the potatoes after one and 1/4 hour. It's important that they be soft in the middle. Keep baking another 15 mins if you have to.

As soon as the potatoes are done, heat the cream and milk together over medium-low heat. Slice the potatoes open and scrape the contents into the bowl with the garlic and butter.

Mash with a potato masher or a big spoon to get the lumps out. Then pour in the hot milk/cream mixture, and here you have a choice. The recipe says to whip the potatoes in an electric blender, but personally I like it better if you don't. It seems more real without the whipping to me.

Add the salt and serve immediately.

If you ever want to impress someone, this is the recipe to use. You can't, of course, make it too often, because of the heavy whipping cream. But if you ever need to pull out all the stops and impress someone, this is a dish they will never forget, nor will you.

They will be your slaves after this.

[spoonieluv247]

Angel can't enjoy them.

but Spike can't either!! take that, Brainiac!!


my favorite thing about Turkey Day? Joel and the 'bots....



as Joel himself would say, "WHAT'DA'YA THINK, SIRS???"

[Watchtower]

Oh Thanksgiving... I was actually supposed to be born on Thanksgiving, but I was born about a week later.

I don't know what my plans are. Usually, I would have gone with my mom and sister to have Thanksgiving with my great grandmother in central Florida, just so she wouldn't be alone because my grandparents go up to see my Uncle and we would talk to them on Skype. I remember two years ago, I helped my Great Grandmother see my Uncle, her only grandson, for the first time in like ten years via Skype. My Uncle is unable to travel down here.

Last year, we went to visit her, she was starting to be forgetful, but she did remember about how she was a writer, she inspires me, and at least she passed away knowing that she was able to inspire someone in her family. I am thankful that two years ago, I was at least able to help her see her grandson one last time and that I got to see her twice last year. This is the first Thanksgiving without her.

I think this year, my sister is gonna join me with my dad, grandmother, uncle, aunt, and her husband, to our own Thanksgiving dinner. Then we're going down to central Florida to be with my grandfather, he stayed this time because his health is not very good.

I am thankful for every single one of you. You guys have accepted me for who I am. You guys have shown me that there are people who care. I honestly wouldn't know where I'd be if it weren't for you guys. This is home, you guys are family, and I love you guys. You guys have made me a better person, and for that, I thank you.

[Mistermoonlight]

Nov 17, 2012 22:48:58 GMT -5 spoonieluv247 said:

Angel can't enjoy them.

but Spike can't either!! take that, Brainiac!!


my favorite thing about Turkey Day? Joel and the 'bots....



as Joel himself would say, "WHAT'DA'YA THINK, SIRS???"

We think, in this case, eating turkey might constitute cannibalism.

[gilmorefanalways]

Nov 17, 2012 18:47:52 GMT -5 Mistermoonlight said:

Here's a place for us to share our plans for the holiday, what we love, what we hate, our favorite foods and recipes, and of course, what we are thankful for. So, have at it.

I'll start things off. It seems like decades and decades ago, but last year at this time we were still at the CW Lounge (I can't remember whether the spam attacks had started by Thanksgiving or not.)

That means this is our first Thanksgiving together as a group, in our own place. Ijk y juJu'm thankful we found a way to all remain together and thrive. Basically we said 'in your face' to the CW when they tried to destroy the relationships we've enjoyed together for such a long time.

I'm thankful for you, each and every person here. You've made my life richer than you'll ever know. I've never seen the kind of courage and love I see here, and certainly not the wit.

You make me better every day.

Thank you.

Very well said moon and if you don't mind i would like to put the part where you said you make me better everyday into my quote book

[Mistermoonlight]

Sure, although I'm not the first person to say those words. I just now did a Google search to check on that, and I see that it's out there all over the place. Unfortunately, I can't find an attribution to the original author.

[gilmorefanalways]

Well still thank you moon for bringing such a wonderful quote to my attention then i like to collect all the nice quotes I've heard or think of or read or wherever i find them basically and put them in a notebook i have 4 notebooks so far lol

[SoCal]

[Mistermoonlight]

[SoCal]

[KyleEl]

I'm going to do something I've never done before this year. I can't recall ever having a "family" Thanksgiving. For as long as I can remember, my parents and I would go to my grandmother's nursing home and eat with her. The food there was really good. They made turkey and dressing just the way I liked it, and I also had peas, corn bread and pumpkin pie. And probably sweet potatoes.

It has been thirty years. For a few years we ate in a restaurant but it took a while to find one that made turkey and dressing and the other stuff the way I wanted it. One place had some pink mess that had cranberry in it. I want cranberry sauce exactly as it comes from a can. But K&W Cafeteria, I discovered, had turkey and dressing the way I liked, though not some of the other stuff. A few years ago I found out they had turkey at other times, so I chose not to drive all the way to the place on a day when I couldn't go to a library or anything. But when I did go, turkey was served for supper, not when I went. So I missed my Thanksgiving dinner that year. This year and last year, I went to a K&W with my aunt and we had turkey and dressing--on the first Sunday in November.

So I'm free this year. My other aunt has invited me to her place for years but I was afraid of missing the parades, plus I don't think they have the traditional meal. The last time, or one of the last times, we visited my other grandmother in the nursing home the day before Thanksgiving, my uncle was in the car as we passed a barbecue place and he said he'd rather have barbecue. So I think that's what they have. I know we have it the day after Christmas. Anyway, I've had my traditional meal, and the parade is televised at 4:00, not 1:00 or 2:00 as it has been a lot of years. I tape the Macy's parade anyway to keep from having to put up with garbage (so-called music that isn't traditional Broadway or a marching band).

[SoCal]

Nov 20, 2012 15:45:51 GMT -5 KyleEl said:

I'm going to do something I've never done before this year. I can't recall ever having a "family" Thanksgiving. For as long as I can remember, my parents and I would go to my grandmother's nursing home and eat with her. The food there was really good.

And you don't call that a "family meal?"

[KyleEl]

Nov 20, 2012 15:53:41 GMT -5 SoCal said:

Nov 20, 2012 15:45:51 GMT -5 KyleEl said:

I'm going to do something I've never done before this year. I can't recall ever having a "family" Thanksgiving. For as long as I can remember, my parents and I would go to my grandmother's nursing home and eat with her. The food there was really good.

And you don't call that a "family meal?"

Well, it wasn't like Christmas where there were grandparents, five daughters and spouses, and a bunch of grandchildren. And it wasn't in a house.

Actually, let me make a correction. My grandmother had two daughters, one with her first husband and one with my grandfather. And my grandfather had three daughters with his first wife, who was my biological grandmother, though she didn't live to see grandchildren.

[SoCal]

Nov 20, 2012 16:11:41 GMT -5 KyleEl said:

Nov 20, 2012 15:53:41 GMT -5 SoCal said:

And you don't call that a "family meal?"

Well, it wasn't like Christmas where there were grandparents, five daughters and spouses, and a bunch of grandchildren. And it wasn't in a house.

Okay, I'll give you that.

[Mistermoonlight]

Nov 19, 2012 22:12:38 GMT -5 SoCal said:

What a beautiful song. I'd never heard it before. I was almost in tears watching this video. It reminded me so much of my mother and father, grandparents, and the friends I have lost. I'd give anything to see them again. It made me grateful for every moment I had with them. Thank you.

[AntiArbitrator]

I will make the long 12-minute drive to my daughter's house and eat a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. I will eat cranberry sauce out of a can the way Kyle likes it. We will enjoy light-hearted trivial discussions about movies, music and anything else we want to chat about.

Then we will watch sports and/or movies on TV.

[Watchtower]

I guess this year, my sister is joining me with my dad and grandma and uncle and maybe my aunt and her husband to go to a restaurant. I'm still not sure.

[avp60685]

I am truly thankful for all of you because you all are so very special to me in your own ways!

Thanksgiving is a very special to me and it is also a bittersweet experience too, you see my father died two weeks before Thanksgiving three years ago and my mother's father died in 1986a week just before Thanksgiving but we have always managed to find a way to make the holiday special!

Thanksgiving has traditionally been celebrated with my mom and dad and we would try go to a Thanksgiving Day service somewhere in the area but as you can imagine it is a huge challenge. I have celebrated Thanksgiving over a few family friends' homes but there is nothing quite like it.

Typically we would start cooking the turkey around 7 in the morning and eat our meal around 2-3, since Dad's death we have had other things besides the traditional turkey and stuff. This year is no exception to the rule, in fact this year we are having eggplant Parmesan, garlic rolls, scalloped potatoes, green bean casserole (we try and fix one every year I will post the recipe at the end of this post!), a salad, a cherry pie or dutch apple pie with either whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

When my dad was alive we would watch a movie that told about the background on the Pilgrims traveling to America on the Mayflower, it was basically a Christian documentary called "The America's Covenant" and it told about the Christian heritage in America up until now! It had reenactments and actual footage at the places where these events took place was filmed there!

Since my dad's death, I typically do not this anymore with my mom but we do tell of some of the things we are thankful for. We used to have a huge laundry basket where my parents and I would label a piece of fruit with at least one thing we were thankful for and we would take turns reading them out loud, a few years I used to keep a Thanksgiving notebook of all that I was thankful for, the furthest I got was about 2000 items with no duplicates!

I hope you all have a blessed holiday and I am so glad for this opportunity to share with you some of my special memories and to let you know that I am thankful for each and every one of you!


AVP/ALY/ALYSIA


Classic Green Bean Casserole


Prep

10 min.

Total

40 min.

Serves

6

Servings: about 3/4 cup each

Bake: 30 min.

Made With

Campbell's® Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup



What You'll Need
1 can (10 3/4 ounces) Campbell's® Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup (Regular, 98% Fat Free or Healthy Request®)
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon soy sauce
Dash ground black pepper
4 cups cooked cut green beans
1 1/3 cups French's® French Fried Onions
2 Tablespoons of Sour Cream
2 splashes (a teaspoon) of Worcester sauce
How to Make It

1

Stir the soup, milk, sour cream, Worcester sauce, soy sauce, black pepper, beans and 2/3 cup onions in a 1 1/2-quart casserole.
2

Bake at 350°F. for 25 minutes or until the bean mixture is hot and bubbling. Stir the bean mixture. Sprinkle with the remaining onions.
3

Bake for 5 minutes or until the onions are golden brown.

[KyleEl]

So here's what we actually did.

After washing clothes (which always happens while I'm in bed), doing yard work and getting my exercise, I went to my aunt's house. My cousin from Georgia, her husband and her son were there, which I wasn't expecting.

My aunt showed me a newspaper which was one of several she had with an article about her first granddaughter. I wasn't aware she had tried out for "American Idol" but they said she did well and just needed to be better. She may have reached their age limit, though. Later in the day my aunt went to the granddaughter's place of business to get her hair done, and I was alone with my uncle, so I just went home since it was time for the Charlotte parade to air. It's a good thing I did, because when I turned on my TiVo it said the Macy's parade would be deleted at 4:00. Had the Charlotte parade aired at 1, I would have lost the Macy's parade. I thought I had done everything I needed to, deleting right and left when I had nothing to watch on Wednesday. Next year I'll use the VHS for the Charlotte parade--provided it still works!

As I was reading that newspaper and the more recent one, everyone started showing up. The first great-grandchild spent most of the day in a bedroom playing with a small computer. She had to be called when we all stood in a circle for the blessing. I was relieved we didn't do the "What are you thankful for" routine. That was the last time we were all together, as everyone was scattered all over the house. I heard my aunt say on the phone there were 25 of us. However, her sister was too sick to come. I saw her several weeks ago when I had Thanksgiving dinner. We did have turkey, as it turned out, and dressing and something with sweet potatoes, and several desserts. There were also casseroles that I didn't bother with.

I went back to the computer room hoping to put a photo of my other aunt on Facebook when someone was free to help me. There wasn't one. I also wasn't able to get podcasts of Mike Huckabee episodes I missed while at the beach, but surely one of the grandkids has iTunes and can help me at Christmas. On that subject, so many people are working (we have our celebration the day after) that we will have supper but not lunch. I don't know what that means for opening presents. I have to go home for "Jeopardy", though it'll already be dark anyway if we have to wait for people to get off work.

The computer was so slow I missed getting to spend time with the others and they left every few minutes since there were other places to go. But I was determined to look at my online newspapers and comic strips to make things easier later. Some of the papers don't give you a way to look at a previous day's articles. You can only search for them by knowing what they were about. And by the time I was through, it was just my uncle and me.

I was surprised, given my aunt's age and her getting cancer treatment earlier, that she helped cook and get ready. I did see her daughters cleaning up. My uncle did some cleaning up of his own, but it was mostly putting away TV trays.

[Mistermoonlight]

It just wouldn't be Thanksgiving without this:

[AntiArbitrator]

The day went as planned. My daughter wanted just the immediate family + me for dinner. At the last minute, some of her in-laws asked if they could join us for dinner, which really upset her because she had not planned for them. I told her that if it would not cause problems with her husband, she could decline the request. She discussed it with him and he said it was okay to not change her plans. Late in the day, they drove over to pay respects to the in-laws.

We had turkey,dressing, cranberry sauce, gravy, ham, candied yams, collards, potatoes and biscuits. There were both pumpkin pie and sweet potato pies, but I did not have room to eat any. I'll have to go back to get some if the guys don't eat them all. I complimented my daughter for cooking everything perfectly; she had no mishaps.

As usual, I was on clean-up detail, but she had cleaned while cooking this time, so it took only twenty minutes. I think I will let her son spend Wednesday with me each holiday if it makes planning that easy. After dinner, we watched basketball and football. That's cool, because we can talk while the games are on. During movies, we keep the chatter to a minimum.

[spoonieluv247]

i saw RED DAWN today!!! I only have ONE question....

movieline.com/2012/11/21/red-dawn-scathing-reviews-chris-hemsworth-north-korea/

when does THE HOBBIT open up, anyway?

[SoCal]

Thanksgiving was lovely. Drove the 25 miles to my sister's house, where my brother-in-law's mother was staying for the week. After a little schmoozing, we piled into their big car (myself, grandma, my sister, her hubs and their daughter) along with bags and boxes of goodies and birthday presents and drove the 50 miles to Del Aire (near Manhatten Beach) to spend the day with my nephew, his wife and their two 15 month twin daughters.

My nephew is the cook in the house and he really had things organized. The turkey was almost done, the potatoes were peeled and ready to cut up and boil and the green beans were trimmed and ready to saute. We all got some "adult" beverages and chatted for a bit, and then started to get dinner finished up. Everyone except grandma chipped in. My niece had made some biscuits that she brought (she borrowed my Kitchen Aid stand mixer and loved it), and my bro-in-law had made his world famous stuffing....no box ingredients...all from scratch. I brought wine and champagne. I made the gravy, my bro-in-law finished up the garlic mashed potatoes and my nephew finished up a firehouse recipe for sauted green beans while the turkey rested.

The meal was very good and even the little girls (after their nap) had some turkey.

There was both apple and pumpkin pie for desert along with cups of coffee. Two people had birthdays right near the holiday, so we opened presents and of course the TV was turned to each and every football game that was on.

The drive home was remarkably "traffic light" and after sitting and chatting again there for about 45 minutes, I drove back home where my cat was impatiently waiting for his holiday feast! Fancy Feast, that is.

It was a lovely day and I enjoyed every minute of if. I had decided the day before that I wasn't going to stress out about anything......nothing was going to interfere with what should always be a real day of thanks....for family, good health, friends and the opportunity to enjoy them all. We have enough time the rest of the year to stress out!

Hope you all had a peaceful, blessed and happy Thanksgiving.

[Watchtower]

Thanksgiving was wonderful... went to lunch at Cracker Barrel with the family then went to my Aunt and Uncles. We all had a fun time, my Uncle had eggnog and served it up, it was good. Today, I just had a second Thanksgiving dinner, Grandmother still insisted. I think what happened was that she had already gotten the turkey and everything else but our plans kept changing.

Regardless, I had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

[KyleEl]

Nov 24, 2012 13:13:58 GMT -5 SoCal said:

We all got some "adult" beverages and chatted for a bit

No "adult" beverages in my family.

I do remember that when my cousin got married 20 years ago it was on her family's property, so they may have done things differently. There were two punch bowls and one had a wine bottle be it, so you knew you were getting that kind of punch.

I also remember one aunt whose mother married into the family having alcohol at her retirement celebration. I remember this because her little grandson was given the alcoholic drink to take to whoever was drinking. If I had wanted to get the caterers in trouble I could have stated the simple fact.

The people who moved into my grandparents' house invited me over to a celebration of Scotland culture they were having some years ago. I commented that my grandfather would have had a fit if he knew people were drinking alcohol in his house. By the way, I didn't drink.

[KyleEl]

Nov 24, 2012 14:42:17 GMT -5 Watchtower said:

Thanksgiving was wonderful... went to lunch at Cracker Barrel

My aunts like to get together there.

[SoCal]

Well, then, people who can't handle their alcohol intake shouldn't partake, but for those of us who enjoy a glass of scotch or champagne or wine as part of a holiday celebration don't need to defend ourselves.