What are you doing for Thanksgiving?

In Canada ours is in October and I had to work, so not much as I recall, Mrs Squeeky had to work as well.

@SQUEEKY2: What kind of work does Mrs. Squeeky do?

We has just finished an unofficial Thanksgiving meal. The original purpose was to celebrate grandma’s arrival, but then we realized that today is Thanksgiving, so we called the meal “Thanksgiving”. We ordered some food from a restaurant and everyone enjoyed it, especially grandma.

Happy Thanksgiving to you too @jca!

I don’t celebrate any kind of Thanksgiving. I’ll be tutoring, then decorating the Christmas Tree. My meal will probably be a cauliflower cream soup.

Having dinner with my husband. We are having roast turkey, low-carb sausage dressing, gravy, sweet potato-pumpkin casserole, roasted Brussels sprouts with bacon and balsamic vinegar, black & green olives, homemade low-carb cranberry sauce, and low-carb pumpkin pie with whipped cream.

Turkey in the oven… waiting in th jacuzi

We are hosting the family as we do every year. Turkey, ham, and all the fixings.

fasting, saying my prayers, and giving alms to the poor.

Turkey stuffing and chaos

@marinelife: I’m sensing a low carb vibe in your celebration.

I’ve been at my In-laws since Friday night. My husband should be here in an hour. This morning I woke up early, before 6AM and laid in bed for almost two hours fluttering and face booking and shutting my eyes again for 20 minutes and then finally got up when I heard other people stirring in the house. We just had breakfast, I tidied up my room and bathroom and am back in bed relaxing until my husband gets here. Around 4:30 everyone else will arrive for dinner. My SIL a new guy she is dating, two of her friends and her daughter. That’s a total of 9 people including myself.

Yesterday I went with my MIL to the store for last minute groceries and took her out to lunch for a break from preparing Thanksgiving food and meals in general. Tuesday she started preparing and also thinking through, all the stuff she needs to prepare.

She doesn’t let me help her, I don’t know if it is because she doesn’t want me to, or some sort if cultural thing where she is supposed to not accept help. It drives me crazy. Sometimes I insist, like yesterday when she needed to get the good dishes out. She can’t do it, she readily admits that, but she wanted to wait for her 75 year old husband who works all day on his feet and drives an hour each way to work to have him do it. She battled me telling me not to help, but I just did it, because it bothered me so much to leave more work for him.

I’ll insist on washing pots and pans and dishes tonight. I only do that Christmas and Thanksgiving, otherwise I let her wait on me hand and foot.

We are having olives and nuts set out as people arrive. For dinner a pork roast of some sort, turkey, stuffing, roasted veggies, green bean casserole, au gratin potatoes (unless she decided a different potato, she was going back and forth) and gravy. For dessert store bought apple pie and pecan pie and we also have rainbow cookies and almond cookies in the house if anyone wants them.

All the food is made with more fat than I care to eat at once. Always my problem at other people’s Thanksgivings. My cholesterol goes up thinking about it. She put sausage in the stuffing, the roasted veggies are soaked in oil, etc.

Nothing.

@JLeslie: When I’m a visitor in someone’s house overnight, I’m always torn between wanting to stay out of their way and wanting to intervene and help. I also like private time, and I need private time, but I don’t want to appear rude and I also enjoy time with them. So I’m always conflicted. I don’t want to be the guest that the hostess complains about, that they have to entertain me or they can’t get anything done because I’m there. Yet I feel like if I go off and read a book I will insult them.

One of the kids came here early yesterday morning. The other two are expected today.
It is actually a rarity to have all three together.
We will go down to my sisters house, and celebrate Thanksgiving with her family.

@jca If you ever visit me you can treat my house like your home, go into the fridge, use my kitchen, and take a nap in the middle of the day if you want. I’m fine with planning some things during the day together, and the rest of free time doesn’t have to be spent together.

With my MIL it’s impossible for me to figure her out. We had a bad fight many years ago when I was putting my plate in the dishwasher and she literally took it out of my hands to put it in herself. My husband said just let her do everything. At the time I realized she had really grown to know and like me a couple years before that when we lived with them for three mnths and I had a back injury and she did everything. She cooked us all our meals, cleaned, did my laundry, she did everything.

For years after that I didn’t move to help her at all. Fast forward to the last few years and I can see she is more tired, getting older, and she has even voiced that it’s getting to be too much. So, now on the big dinners I just wash the dishes and help with the clearing even at her very insistent objections.

Three years ago, she laid down to rest leaving a lot of dirty dishes still to be washed, and many pots and pans and serving dishes and it was an easy opportunity for me to help without her pushing me away, because she fell asleep. I usually do the helping hidden from her while she is still mingling with guests, that sort of thing. Her son’s boyfriend joined me and we cleaned up the whole kitchen after Christmas dinner. It took over two hours with both of us working. She had already laid down to go to sleep as I mentioned, she didn’t know we were doing it all. The next morning when she woke I was siting on the sofa and my BiL was in the kitchen putting away the dishes we had washed overnight in the dishwasher. She gushed, “You cleaned everything.” He didn’t bother to say, JL and I did it.

Whatever.

She has told me many times how wonderful it is that her one son and his now husband help in the kicthen. WTF?! And, how her daghter second husband’s mother loved her daughter right away because her daughter helped clean up the first time she had dinner at her future MIL’s house.

Finally, last Christmas I said something about it to my BIL by marriage and he said our MIL used to always push him away from helping to, and now he just does whatever the hell he wants, because she is ridiculous about it.

Nowt.
It feels like a very strange ethos to give thanks for, err…for, being alive?
Unless you just like any excuse for a feast, anyway, enjoy your eats y’all.

@JLeslie Love the image of you “fluttering” in your in-law’s guest room!

Got up early and went to an AA meeting to celebrate gratitude for sobriety.

Sent emails to people precious in my life thanking them for being in my life.

Listening to Alice’s Restaurant, a Thanksgiving Tradition.

After dropping the kids at their mom’s, I will have a brunch with my mom and my brother: Eggs Benedict and Turkey with cranberry and yams, all on the same plate.

A run late afternoon, and then the 49er game in the evening.

I was invited to a co workers house, since I recently moved to a new state alone.

It’s just me, my husband, our three children and three pets today. We’re cooking turkey with all the goodies, watching football and then movies later. I may go out and shovel a little snow if I feel up to it, otherwise I’ll be in my pajama pants all day.

@JLeslie , I’m not sure where it came from in my family, cultural or just one woman’s fussy desire to do it herself – somewhere along the way. All I know is, I can’t stand having visitors help with a meal. It feels like I invited them to assist, not partake of my hospitality. I got that habit from my family, growing up with everyone doing that, except at harvest time. At harvest time I had aunts and cousins all collecting at one relative’s farm to cook all together to feed a mob of men. When one farm is taken care of, the mob of men and their women would all move on to the next. I remember being present for a couple of those mob cook ordeals when I was very little. It reminded me of a coven of witches all hovering over steaming cauldrons. Never tell them I thought that. Saying it aloud sounds less mystical and more disrespectful.
@ucme , it is more than celebrating being alive. The pilgrims were celebrating the lives still surviving, but also the friendships they had formed with natives, and the help they had in developing new farming, hunting, and trapping techniques those new friends taught them. Ir was celebrating their survival in a new land which had begun harshly for them, but was beautiful enough to love. Hopes having been dashed, they were vastly thankful to have renewed hope for their existence in the brutal new environment. Also, Little Fawn gave them a spectacular recipe for stuffing. No, okay, I tried to slide that one in. We carry on the tradition, supposedly, to keep ourselves mindful to be thankful for what we have even in the face of hardships, and the value of sharing with peoples who we might not ordinarily think to.
My daughter is watching the Thanksgiving parade on tv. My son is out visiting friends. He should be back shortly. My oldest couldn’t be here today. My ex, I hope my ex is having a sliced turkey sandwich alone in front of his tv. I extended an invitation to which there was no reply.

Last year I went home for thanksgiving and got the flu, and ended up staying there for 3 weeks. Probably going to get Chinese food later.

Big up to ma homies Lewis & Clark…innit.

This is the first time I can remember not celebrating TG on the Thursday of. This year it will be on Saturday, due to work schedules. So we’re just hanging out today, wondering what to do next. It’s odd, because it still feels like Thanksgiving out side.

Searching for good faith based Q&A sites.

eat, do a stupid grace, talk, rest, and keep a fire going.

Had T’sGiving with my daughter yesterday, a sleepover and we had a great time, stayed up til 1.a.m. making merry.
She has multiple dinners to attend so yesterday was out day. I am back at the ranch now, exhausted, but had a great time. Going to bed at 9. haha

@Coloma glad you feel better now.

She actually let me help! I’m shocked. She let me shine the silver and set the table. Then at the lasts 1.5 hours as she was running out of time I told her to go take a shower. I took care of cooking the stuffing and green beans (if I hadn’t they would not have been done on time) if we count her letting me since she was showering and getting ready. I opened the jars for the olives (she has arthritis) and when she came back out I set out the nuts, she did the olives and tortillas and guacamole, and I finished broiling the au gratin to brown it on top and re-roast the veggies for a couple minutes.

I am still shocked.

Now, she is cleaning the kitchen, I can’t really help, she won’t give me room too. I will try to clean everything left (she won’t finish it all) when she goes to sleep. We’ll see.

@Here2_4 Me too. I generally don’t want people to help me in the kitchen. The thing is, like I said, she brags about her daughter helping her MIL and tells me her SIL is so wonderful for helping. Plus, she is in her late 70’s and has said it’s getting to be too much.

I am delighted! She included you, and that is great. It probably is hard for her, but with her needing help so, it is great she relented and allowed you to help. She has had a lot of years to settle into her ways, so it must have been very strange for her. I bet while she was in the shower it occurred to her she was glad to have you there ready to step in and help.

She did thank me before she turned in for the night.

I tried to wash the pots and pans and serving dishes left over after she went to her bedroom, and she caught me washing number three and did her typical thing. So, I am leaving everything else for her, because as usual I get to the point where I think, fine do all of it yourself.

She let my husband help her cut the pork, which he wound up using his hands to take it off the bone, and he is sick with that horrible chest cold, and probably got at least one other person sick. If it was my kitchen I would have thrown him out of it. I gave it to him, so I’m safe. She never challenges him though. Some of it is a girl boy thing. She is from a macho culture and her husband used to be a real piece of work when they were young. Now he has mellowed. When I helped get dishes out of the closet when he wasn’t back from work yet on Wednesday it felt like I demasculinated him (is that a word). Then at one point yesterday when I am pulling a hot dish out of the oven he runs over to do it for me as I am pulling the fucking thing out. Don’t try to move my arm and hand when I have the heat in my face and have a grip on a hot dish. Seriously!

Ugh, that’s all my rant.

Got up early and marathoned all the Roseanne Thanksgiving episodes. Helped bottle beer with my fiance. Took the dog and the goats on a walk in the 14” of snow through the forest out back. Snowy baby goaties are soooo cute. Shoveled lots of snow. Came back inside to help Fiance with the Thanksgiving feast – and the power goes out. Had small freak-out session with Fiance because the bird had just gone in the oven about 20 min prior. Decided that our next best option was to barbeque the bird. Dug grill out of a snowbank, then found that we didn’t have enough charcoal, so built up the fire in the woodstove and carried those coals outside to the grill. It actually worked out really well – made the turkey taste nice and smoky, though the skin came out a bit chewy rather than crisp. Ate dinner by candlelight while watching Planes, Trains, and Automobiles on the laptop. Pulled backup turkey from freezer and stuck it in the fridge to keep stuff in there cold, then put all leftovers from dinner in the freezer, which at that point was about fridge temp. Stuck the ice cream in a snowbank. Enjoyed our inability to do dishes and went to bed. About 3 am the power came back, yay. Electricity-less Thanksgiving was a success!

@wildpotato; What state do you live in?

@jca I live in western Mass.