Disaster Thanksgiving Dinner Stories

About 7 years ago we ditched all the family stuff and had several couples and friends of ours over for Thanksgiving. We had a deck on the back of the house and we decided to fry a turkey. This was before the helpful Allstate ads making fun of idiots like us who fry turkeys on wooden decks or other flammable places! SO, people are there, everyone is drinking and eating oysters and having a high old time, when my friend walks in and says, "It's on fire!" She's slightly given to exaggeration, so I thought maybe a piece of paper or something was on fire. I opened my back door to a wall of flames! I slammed it, ran in and called 911. My husband and a bunch of the guys were in back trying to beat it out and generally just freaking out. Another friend showed up and bravely rushed to the back after handing me his casserole, reached through the flames, GRABBED the propane tank and threw it into the back yard -and then the fire truck arrived and sprayed the entire thing down. After it was out the turkey was still sitting there on the scorched deck (luckily where it was sitting hadn't fallen in like most of it) just bubbling away in the hot oil. My husband and I just looked at each other and he said, "I'll get a meat thermometer -it was almost done." It was done, so we took it out and served it. BEST TURKEY EVER! It was completely picked clean down to the bones! We didn't even have a sliver left over. I told everyone the secret was finishing it off with fire hose water ;-) Yes, it was a pain to replace the deck and overall very scary, but we're all still talking about that Thanksgiving!

One year my sister was doing the deal at her house (she is 12 years older than me)....she was pregnant. Miserable sick the entire thing.

Turkey got "wrecked" by her all day, all the time, morning sickness. She sprinkler hurled all over the table just as she called us all into the room. She could not have timed it any better! We were all milling about in the other rooms as she wanted this perfectly set buffet style table so shoo'ed us ALL out of that room and the kitchen. She called us all in...then came in with the turkey "duh duh daaa" style. She whirled around with the bird, set in down and sprinkler hurled all in the same moment it seemed.

Luckily Domino's delivered on Turkey day. We had pizza and pumpkin pie (that was still in the kitchen).

Happy Turkey day!

Mine is a TRUE HORROR STORY. My husband burned both of his legs from the knees down with turkey fryer grease. It happened 12 years ago and I DESPISE Thanksgiving now. He STILL has issues with the burns and it was the worse thing ever. I would have GLADLY had our son without a single drug if I coud have taken the pain away from him.

That was the longest two months of our lives. Thank GOD both our employers were super supportive and mine allowed me to take a lot of my vacation time so I could be home with him.

My oldest brother was hosting Thanksgiving. They had just bought a new oven/stove--convection--and no O. bothered to really "understand" what that meant.
The turkey was pink an everyone was afraid to eat it!

O. Thanksgiving, hosted at my mom's, everyone got the stomach flu the day after (or late that night), my poor mother was convinced that she poisoned us all by cooking the stuffing in the turkey. She didn't. But she has never put stuffing in the bird since.

My mom, then newly married, hosted dinner and her MIL was "unstuffing the bird" only to reveal the bag of giblets still in the turkey. God love her, she walked it in a spoon to the garbage can and never said a word.

My BFF was having Turkey Day at her Brother and SIL's house, and when her SIL went to remove the turkey from the oven, it was in a DEEP, DEEP pan, floating in WATER!

Another childhood Thanksgiving, and my paternal grandmother was hosting. My (raging alcoholic) father got torqued off over something over the conversation, stood up in a rage, knocked over his chair and stormed out. Good little enablers that we were, we finished dinner. Ah...the memories....

My mom dropped the turkey on the way to the table once.

The sliced ham fell off the counter onto the floor another year.

My ex-husband volunteered to deep fry the turkeys one year and that happened to be the only Thanksgiving in recent history where it rained, snowed, and sleeted in Dallas, TX.

Oh my, I will tell you a horrible story that I never talk about.

My husbands grandmother was seriously ill with cancer, we were living across the state from her. I couldn't get the day off after so I told my husband to go on without me. That way he could spend a few days with his grandma (which actually DID turn out to be her last Thanksgiving). So my boss invited me to her house. I didn't want to go, one because it would be incredibly uncomfortable being by myself with her entire family (I had never even met them before. Two because I am a terribly picky eater, she was from India and was fixing Indian food (which I had never had so naturally I was afraid of it). She insisted that I couldn't be alone on Thanksgiving, so reluctantly I took her home number and said I would think about it.

In the meantime my dad called and said my grandparents would be in the area. So I thought, "Oh here is my ready made excuse." So I called my boss and told her I was going to try and catch up with them. She said oh, that's good! and we hung up. Turns out my Granparents were actually several hours away, so I stuck with what was my original plan. Frozen Pizza and a bunch of stuff my husband won't eat.

Come the next day my boss told me that she was glad I spent Thanksgiving with my family and off handedly mentioned how she had changed all the spices in her dishes, thinking it would suit my palate more. I was horrified! She changed her whole meal for me and I didn't come...when I could have. I never told her I spent Thanksgiving alone....Oh., the shame!

I made the candied yams, first time ever... to take to meet my boyfriends family. Yeah, the marshmallows caught on fire, so I had to trash the dish. Fortunately, we made an awesome turkey together to impress his fam.

Oh, what you said made me laugh!

I haven't had any disasters to speak of, but I just remember watching the movie "The Christmas Story" and the neighbor's dogs getting in their kitchen and eating the turkey. And THEN Ralphie's family going to the Chinese restaurant, only to see the duck's face in front of them before the owner chopped it off, to the mom's great shock!

What a wonderful movie!

Thanks for the thread!
Dawn

Well not a meal, but my grandmother is something else. One year she asked my mom why she ever bothered to have kids anyways. All 5 of us kids were there with a few extras per kid - my mom has always taken in friends who didn't have anywhere to go. That was fun!

Another year, 2002, when I was newly pregnant with my first and my husband (then boyfriend) came to meet her and my step-grandfather (at the time her boyfriend) she said quite loudly: "He's not as dark as I thought."

We laugh about that but now refuse to see her for the term she uses to descrbie our mixed children. She will meet her maker and have to justify herself.

I was living in Germany. Our unit was having a Thanksgiving get together at the office. I cooked the turkey....my stove was broken...we didn't know it though!!

I thought I had gotten all giblets out - and put the stuffing in - my turkey was done inside 45 minutes - my stove had gone haywire and it was like a convection oven!!! LOL!!

I take the turkey to the office - it looks BEAUTIFUL on the outside...the Chaplain goes to slice it - fine - then another bag of giblets was still inside!! OH MY WORD!!!! I was soo embarrassed!! :) It was a great turkey with the exception of the giblets not being out!!

My dad used to tell the story of his and my mom's first Thanksgiving, she didn't know to take the giblets out and left them in :-/

An old boyfriend told me how when he got back from the Army his best friend and his new wife invited him to their home for Thanksgiving. She cooked the turkey at such a low heat it was still raw inside, though it was a delicious-looking golden brown on the outside. He was starving so went and found a White Castle that was open, and ate 30 of their burgers for his Thanksgiving dinner!

The first Thanksgiving we moved away from our families. We were living in Kentucky and I had never cooked a turkey in my life. I must have spent $100 on the phone bill to my mom!!! Turkey was pretty darn good too!!! :)

I went to a friend's house for Thanksgiving and she told all of her guests (about 10 friends) that she would provide the turkey, booze and pie and we should each bring our own favourite Thanksgiving dish. I brought cranberry sauce, one person (who had forgotten she was supposed to bring a dish) brought a bag of frozen peas and everybody else (everybody!) brought potatoes. We ended up with 7 different kinds of potatoes! It was a very carby Thanksgiving. Luckily no one was doing Atkins. :)

Last year my turkey breast roast didnt cook. Good thing we had ham and tons of sides. LOL. It was thawed out, my oven was working just fine, and my ham turned out awesome.

My mom ALWAYS forgets the rolls in the oven. So we always have kinda burnt rolls.

My dad was dating a really nice woman who invited us al to her house for Thanksgiving. When we got there she was getting ready to put everything on the table. I was shocked to see that she had BOILED the turkey in this huge pot of water! The dressing that she made was simply cheap white bread with the turkey water poured on top and then baked. Not only that but one of her side dishes was salmon patties! UGHH! Needless to say we went home starving and vowing to never eat at her house again!

I left a fully cooked Thanksgiving Turkey wrapped in towels (to keep the heat and moisture in) on the kitchen counter. Teen age son in adjoining room was watching the Macy's day parade. My husband and I went for a walk before the real chaos began. As we walked in, son says, " You might want to check the kitchen, I think Holly (dog) did something." Walking into the kitchen expecting to see maybe an overturn food bowl or a puddle of water from the bowl we encounter a very happy dog with a tail wagging with enough energy to power the entire house. And what made this dog so happy? She had grabbed a corner of a towel covering the turkey and brought it down!!!! With a drumstick hanging from her mouth she seemed to be saying, " For me?! Thanks!"
I am able to report that the teen age son is now 35 years old. But only by the skin of his teeth!

5 years ago we went to my SIL's for Thanksgiving dinner and when we got there, that's when she informed us that her 2 little boys (ages 1 and 5 at the time) were sick and had been vomiting with diarrhea non-stop. Had dinner over there anyway because we had driven the 2 hours up there and couldn't make any other plans. EVERYONE in the family ended up getting sick that weekend - me, DH, his sons, their mother, their other sister, her boyfriend, everybody. DH was pissed that his sister could be that dense that she wouldn't have given everyone a head's up and realized that maybe we were better off making other plans without them.

I later learned that at that time, I was probably about 4 days pregnant too. :)