I’m battling a bad cold and laryngitis (nobody laugh!) so I thought I’d bring up something fun and easy for us to discuss that won’t require me to write too much.
Thanksgiving is next week, and I’m always on the lookout for secrets, tips, special ingredients for those holiday dishes, or just super fantastic recipes! Any huge successes or horror stories from holidays past?
Here’s one of each:
Horror story…I was making a pecan pie one year and ran out of Karo syrup so I substituted about 1/3 cup of it with Molasses. YUCK. Molasses does not a pecan pie make. 
Now a success story…I grew up with a Newfoundlander for a mother and she was the queen of root vegetables. I really love turnips and rutabagas, though a lot of people don’t even know what they look like! Anyway, one year I was making rutabagas, mashed them with butter and what I thought was pepper. But it turned out I was liberally sprinkling Old Bay seafood seasoning in there! Believe it or not, it was a BIG hit. So now I intentionally use the Old Bay.
Anybody else have anything to share? Special tips, or colossal foul-ups? Any great recipes or secrets to share?
Thanksgiving is almost here…yum! :banana:
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Side Note: Visit Carly today blogging at COS Productions where you can post for a chance to win a fun prize!
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Leslie Kelly used to say she wanted to be a doctor when she grew up, but then she discovered Nancy Drew books. Being a flashlight-under-the-covers-nose-in-book reader throughout her childhood, she couldn’t think of anything else she’d rather do as an adult than continue to lose herself in fictional stories. Her real life marriage of 20 years to the man of her dreams is a constant reinforcement that happily-ever-afters really can happen…and that they’re worth writing about. Living in Maryland, Leslie spends her non-writing time laughing a lot with the above-mentioned romance hero and their three daughters. Though an author of more than thirty sexy, contemporary comedies, she has recently branched out to write dark romantic suspense under the pseudonym Leslie Parrish.
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Foul ups? Ah, yes.
My first Thanksgiving in Georgia…and my first Thanksgiving away from my family and spending it with my husband’s Georgian relatives. I decided to bring a little Florida to the party and make a key lime cheesecake with raspberry sauce from a recipe I found in Southern Living.
First, I had to SCOUR Atlanta to find real key lime juice. No easy feat…had to go to about four Harry’s Farmer’s Markets all over the city (back when they were everywhere) to find it. I followed the recipe to the T…everything homemade. I remember straining the raspberries because I hate the seeds and it took hours upon hours to get all those suckers out.
It looked delicious.
It was not.
It was awful!
The sauce was good.
I about died. I take great pride in being a good cook and I fouled this one up big time. They kept telling me it was yummy…but I corrected them. It was not yummy. It was awful and I was so embarrassed!
Luckily, we moved back to Florida pretty soon after!!
I have no other “hits” for Thanksgiving, but I’m trying a new one this year. From Paula Dean. It has lots of mayo…can’t be bad, right? I may try it before Thanksgiving though!
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Oy. Not much of a cook, good or bad, so I got nothin’. Will be interesting to read others’ experiences though.
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Food? Cooking? Colossal foulups? All Equal CARLY.
Did he care? Nope. He was munching away. I grabbed it, washed it off, and called Mom, trying to convince her that we could season it up and serve it anyway. 
She wasn’t buying it. Luckily hubby owns a supermarket and there were still turkeys left the night before Thanksgiving.
A few years ago, the turkey was defrosting on the counter. I was having oh about 20 people. It was one huge turkey. I wasn’t in the kitchen. I heard a crash. I came running. Buddy was eating the raw turkey. He’d pulled it off the counter and nearly missed knocking himself out cold.
Embarrasingly? I cater in the rest every year. I’m just the turkey maker. Or am I the turkey?
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Leslie, one of my favorite treats also came from a Newfoundlander–Blueberry Grunt. It’s impossible to ruin this–even if you drop half the dish on the floor.
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My mom is the cook for Thanksgiving. Mom’s house is the gathering place for the holidays. Several years ago Mom was putting the turkey in the oven and accidently dropped the turkey on her foot. Thank goodness nothing was broken and the turkey was washed off. Another year she dropped a knife on her foot and had a bad cut. Last year she has a terrible migraine so it was up to me to finish making the side dishes. I forgot the gravy, the mashed potatoes were too lumpy, and the rolls were extra crispy. You do not want me to cook for the holidays.
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When my husband owned his first business and had a lot of employees, he used to get everyone Turkeys each year for Thanksgiving. One year he got us this *huge* turkey which was ridiculous for two people plus our daughter who at that time was a toddler. We had so much food left over that we made up plates of the leftovers and took them down town to this park where homeless people hang out next to the soup kitchen at Holy Ghost church and handed out the food. That was actually the best Thanksgiving ever.
Of course on the drive home, my husband suddenly panicked and said “I shouldn’t have brought you and Lilly down there it was dangerous. Something could have happened…”
I just patted him on the arm and said, “Stop worrying. We did a good thing.”
He made us stay in the car while he handed out the plates anyway…
Carly, your frozen turkey story is hilarious!
Have a great day all,
Cher :banana:
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Leslie, I hope you feel better soon. I had the same thing about 2 weeks ago.
My biggest mess up was a couple of years ago. We always make sweet potato casserole every year for Thanksgiving. My sister and I were getting all the groceries and decided that canned sweet potatoes would be easier to deal with than boiling and peeling the sweet potatoes. Of course, we bought the wrong thing, but decided we would try and make it work rather than go back to the store again. It was the worst dish ever. First it really wouldn’t cook right, then the topping fell into the mixture, so instead of having the nice brown sugar and pecan topping, it was mixed in with the casserole. My family was really sweet about it too. Everyone took some at dinner, and they all tried to eat what they had taken too. I put a stop to it as soon as I took a bite and we ended up throwing the whole casserole away. We now always boil and peel our sweet potatoes.
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I wish I had a thanksgiving food story (we always go to someone’s house). I am afraid of cooking a whole fowl, anyway.
I have two (out of three) boys sick today, plus myself. I think we all have something different. I was up with them from 2 until about 4:45. I hate to wake them to take #3 to school, but I must
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LOL Carly. You’ve got the “Bumpus’ Dogs” right in your house. (Who gets that reference?)
No hits and misses here. My FIL is a trained chef and the men do all the cooking in our house. And they’re traditional, so no particularly interesting recipes to share. I made my mom’s waldorf salad one year and was the only one who ate it. My in-laws are also picky–ridiculously so.
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LOL Carly that was hilarious!!
:dog1:
Cher, that was a great story!!
Leslie hope you feel better
:hug2: …although I must admit, my hubby loves when I have laryngitis he says I sound so sexy…lol
I love Thanksgiving, especially since my husband started deep frying our turkey…it is truely the best turkey ever! And it cooks so fast that we eat our antipasta and lasanga first then cook the turkey which gives everyone time to breathe….is anyone else getting hungry?
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Oh Carly, I remember that Buddy story…
Definitely a Bumpus hound (yeah, I absolutely caught that one, Lori! Can’t wait for the Christmas movie season to start. Only one more week and two days and then we can officially start doing Christmas things in my house! (We’re not allowed to until Santa comes down the street in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Bruce is an absolute Nazi about it. :grin1:
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Darlene, I’ve never heard of Blueberry Grunt…but you know what, I have such strong memories of going blueberry picking when we visited St. John’s to see my grandparents when I was a kid!
What I really miss is the salt meat–Jig’s Dinner. Yummmmmmm.
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Bluecat…welcome! And my hubby calls rolls “space wasters” on Thanksgiving anyway, no big loss.
Katie–hope the kids get better quickly!
And Tina, Bruce has been calling me Kathleen Turner for 2 days!
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Liza–I make a sweet potato casserole, too, with freshed boiled potatoes. I actually intentionally melt the “topping”– the butter, marshmallows, brown sugar, nutmeg & pecans, and let it become a glaze that coats the potatoes. Yummmmmm.
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Cher, that’s a wonderful holiday memory and such a good thing to do!
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First, I hope everyone with this horrible cold going around gets better soon. We all have it in our house and it is no fun.
For the holidays we are always traveling back home so I am the baker, not the cook. This is good but I am not a very good cook. I can bake well, but cooking, not so good.
The only horror story I have is not really a holiday, but cold weather, story. I CANNOT make chili. Every winter I try and every winter I fail. I don’t know what I do wrong. I have tried different recipes. It ALWAYS turns out awful.
Hubby has requested I give up. 
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Kelly, funny chili story…just yesterday, I was hungry, but had nothing “good” in the house except some ground meat. I decided to follow the recipe on the back of the Hunt’s Tomato Sauce and make a meat sauce for pasta…totally against my better Italian judgment. (Good sauce cannot be made in 15 minutes, no matter what Rachel Ray says.)
Anyway, it was awful.
So I left it on the stove and went to pick up my daughter from school, determined to toss it out when I got home. While waiting with the other moms, one mentioned she was making chili for dinner. I said I cannot make good chili…and besides, no one in my family actually eats chili except me.
She got me thinking, though, so I went home, added a generous helping of chili powder, some cumin, hot sauce and a can of dark red kidney beans to the previously disgusting sauce and it actually was a pretty good chili!
If you use the recipe (it’s on the Hunts Tomato Sauce) do not put brown sugar…I put a pinch of baking soda instead. Of course, that might have been what was wrong with the sauce, but I cannot put sugar in tomato sauce. It goes against everything I was ever taught, LOL!
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Thanks for your stories, everyone! Ah… it’s great to know I’m not alone!
I don’t have many stories because I tend to avoid cooking–I’ve already dried out several turkeys and don’t want to destroy any more food. I CAN do green bean casserole (even I can open cans and pour them into a dish
) and surprisingly, I can make chili (although it’s one of the very few things I can make–Kelly, if you want another recipe to try, let me know 
)
Leslie, it’s pretty funny that Bruce dictates the official Santa-appearance timetable–love it!
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hey Leslie,
Just wanted to say: Hope you’ll soon feel better. So take care…
sorry but I’m in a rush. So I just had time to check todays comments and post a short one. I’m sure there are a lot of fun stories but mine has to wait.
Carly, a funny story with Buddy. That way life’s at least never boring, isn’t it? And then add kids and you’ve got your hands full.
Have to stop now, like I said I’m in a hurry.
See you :wave:
Vero
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Bruce, a Nazi about Christmas decorating!!! Oh my!!
Since I haven’t cooked a traditional turkey dinner in many years I can’t think of any tips or stories! I do remember the year we were moving over Thanksgiving weekend including Thanksgiving day & I fixed T-Bone steaks, baked potatoes & don’t remember what else–it was yummy & easy! Last year for Thanksgiving I fixed dinner for just myself & my 17 year old grandson, we had Scampi, fresh asparagus, tossed green salad & I did make pumpking pie! Non-traditional but extremely tasty & not a difficult dinner to make.
Julie, I often put a small amount of sugar in my spaghetti sauce to cut the acid but it doesn’ add any flavor to the sauce.
Cher, I loved your story about sharing your Thanksgiving feast, great idea.
The sun is shinning, it is suppose to reach the 70’s so it doesn’t seem like it is almost Thanksgiving! At this point I have no plans. One daughter is not able to travel down from Oregon this year with her family & the daughter that lives nearby usually works. I may fix dinner for my grandson again but that is not firm yet. He is now 18, has a job in a restaurant that will be open. So far I have no menu in mind but may do Rock Cornish Game Hens which are a good substiture for turkey if you are cooking for one or two people.
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Foul ups? Oh yeah. There was the peach cobbler that didn’t cobble. Then there was the pecan pie that never set. Doesn’t go down quite as well as a beverage. Why is it always my dessert?
Surefire? Collard greens, once I learned what a collard looked like (courtesy of my MIL via cellphone while I stood perplexed in the grocery store) and how to cook them (also courtesy of MIL). Mac-n-cheese (no box, here!), yams and of course, Tom Turkey. I usually try to add one non-traditional dish, like stuffed shells or pot roast.
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Leslie, if we had just melted the topping over the sweet potatoes it would have been ok. No, we tried to make the casserole with the yams. The topping didn’t so much melt as be absorbed by the mixture. Did I forget to say the mixture grew and wasn’t the right color either? My BIL almost wouldn’t let us make the dish the next year it was so bad. He messed up dinner last year. He always deep fries the turkey and last year he waited until all the food was ready to heat the oil. The turkey was hot, but all the casseroles were pretty much cold 2 hours later when the turkey was finally cooked.
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Sorry, I don’t have any foul-ups, but here is a very good recipe.
Corn Bread Casserole
Beat 2 Eggs lightly
Add: 8 oz pkg cornbread mix
8 oz can cream corn
8 oz can kernel corn (drained)
1 cube butter (melted)
1 cup sour cream
Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes
Last 15 minutes add grated swiss cheese or top.
This is very good.
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I can’t cook but I love green bean casserole. I especially like the crispy fried onions from French’s.
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Yummm…that cornbread casserole does sound good!!!
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We do the corn bread casserole every year. I love it!
i cheat and use canned yams, but we don’t do the cruncy topping. I am the only one that likes that.
’s.
On the other hand, I do my pumpkin pie from scratch, right to growing them myself. I grew up on a farm where our main crop was pumpkins. I love doing it and have made them for many people who then want the recipie. Uh-uh. I have one I have developed over the years and won’t give it out. It is not your usual bland (to me) canned pumpkin pie.
Even tho I cook T-day dinner every year, the pie is my specialty. Along with the other 5 or 6 I make and the full dinner. And this year we are staying home so I have to cook turkey. did I tell you I hate to cook turkey??
I swear there is a virus going around that is passed on the internet. Heather just want back to school yesterday after 2 weeks out. ick.
Hope you feel better soon!!
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lol. Everyone here is too funny. I have too many turkey stories to mention from a long time ago. I’m actually a pretty good cook, but we’ve gone almost completely fat-free and vegetarian over the past three years. This year was our very first completely vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner and we had less than 4 grams of fat per person on our massively covered with food plates. There is definitely something to be said for having your favorites and just eating those every year–sweet corn, garlic mashed potatoes, brown gravy, cornbread stuffing, green bean casserole (where all the fat came from, the gravy was fat-free). Yum. :gobble: