I wish I was like you, easily amu--wait, I *am* easily amused.

[mrissa]

What do you wish you were going to have at your Thanksgiving dinner that you know you probably won't get?

If you don't celebrate Thanksgiving at any time of year, feel free to answer with whatever other large meal-based holiday you do celebrate.

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Nothing, really. But then, I'm making the stuffing, cooking the turkey, and bringing the wine myself -- the key elements. Plus Pamela is bringing the key dessert, the mince pie.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I wish my sister and her boyfriend were going to be around for Christmas dinner, but I don't think that's going to happen, sadly.

As for food, well, I think it's all pretty much coverered. I'm still definitely at the apprentice stage for Christmas cake, so I suspect that we'll all be wishing for an upgrade on that, but I've got to learn at some point, and if we all made Christmas cake we'd still be eating it by next Christmas. I've just bought another bottle of brandy, so I should be able to make sure it's got enough alcohol in it, at least.

Oh, and I do hope that my mum will handle the more effortful parts by delegating to family members instead of delegating to supermarket pre-made dishes, but other than offering to help, that's not my decision to make.

[the_rck]

At this point, I'm afraid I won't have a Thanksgiving dinner at all. I'm coming down with a cold and may not be fit to go to my in-laws' place. (I'm judging by how things went for my husband. I caught the cold from him.) There's something wrong with contemplating eating leftovers on Thanksgiving.

One thing I miss from my childhood is stuffing actually cooked in the turkey. My mother used to do that, but my mother-in-law does dressing in a pan on the side.

[lynnal.livejournal.com]

My family. While I don't actually want the stress of having them descend on my house, I would like them to magically appear and enjoy the meal. Especially my dad, who died this summer.

On the food side, my grandma's rolls. I have her recipe, but my chances of getting them to come out just right are slim. For the most part I can cook the food the way I like it. There is quite a lot of it to do, but I will get help from Victor. In our decision to relax and not travel this year, we also resolved that Turkey Day does not have to be Thursday. It might turn out to be Thursday anyway, but having the option to take more time makes for a much less stressful holiday for me.

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

Reflecting general comments above: My sweeties. Not that I will object to the company I expect to keep, but it would be nice.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Stuffing with gravy. I only know how to make cream gravies, not the meat kind, and I lost the one good stuffing recipe I had and am afraid to go looking for another. We're probably going to have some kind of random pasta dish for Thanksgiving, but then our household is too small for a turkey to make sense.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

We're actually not doing a Thanksgiving meal this year - we essentially had Thanksgiving at the end of October when my father came out to visit, and we decided we just really didn't have the money for another $300 feast.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, supermarket pre-made is good enough for some things (veggie trays, for example, if someone is exhausted and wants to take that route), but not really for others. And for me, that "not really for others" covers just about everything. Even at Byerly's.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I got sick on Thanksgiving morning the year I was thirteen, and I wasn't really well again until Christmas Eve. That was not any fun. Please to be dodging that.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

First time through it all without someone you love is hard even if you didn't always see them for every holiday. I'm sorry. I'll be thinking of you.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And are you happy with that, or do you think you'll miss it? Because me, I am glad to take any opportunity to not have turkey.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

When we had Thanksgivings out in California without family (except each other), I tended to make lasagna. timprov misses the lasagna, I think, and my mom is a bit jealous of it.

[vcmw]

Green bean casserole. I am the only one who likes it, and so it just seems silly to make it for only me. We will have my mom's curried yams and cashew-nut vegetarian gravy, though!

Also, my grandmother, who will be enjoying a month in Sicily this year and so will miss Thanksgiving. I'm glad for her (Sicily!) but sort of wish she could teleport home for the meal.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Cashews are our friiiiiends. And so are yams. So that sounds really good to me.

(But we're having yams, too, so that'll be okay.)

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

It's also that (a)you don't need to prioritise saving effort over money when there are People Right Here Who Could Help, (b)I quite like doing the preparation-and-making-stuff stages, especially when it's a whole-family effort and we can put some Christmas music on, and (c)I have a sneaking suspicion that my mum doesn't think that her cooking is as good as it in fact is.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

I suspect there will be a few moments of "Huh?" on Thursday because we won't be doing what is "normal," but we ate our fill, so I don't expect to miss it too terribly much (well, except maybe the pumpkin pie).

[columbina.livejournal.com]

I, um, kinda wish I was not having Thanksgiving dinner.

I don't really like having people over, and Thanksgiving is not a very meaningful holiday to me ... but it's my wife's Big Holiday and I can't really deprive her of the chance to cook something big and elaborate - she clearly enjoys it so much.

Sorry to be the person with the negative reply. I think I'm mostly not into large meal-based holidays. I come from a Food Is Love and a Food Is Religion culture - so I do understand the impulse - but the problem is that 1) cooking itself is rarely ever a pleasant or meditative activity to me*, and 2) my impulses to feed people tend to be confined to one or two people at a time.

*The lone exception is that I have to spend several hours brewing up a pot of gumbo several times a year, just to keep my soul fed.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

I might add, just to show I am not all ashes and sackcloth, that the carcass of this year's Indian-spiced turkey is going to make an extremely interesting gumbo later! So there's that.

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

Snow.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

Some time, I would like to revive my French great-grandmother's tradition of serving escargot as part of the Thanksgiving meal. Since I'm helping to prepare Thanksgiving dinner this year, I could do it, I suppose, but never having prepared snails before, I think my first attempt should be for a lower-stakes occasion.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

We've always done both. Not nearly enough space inside even a 20lb turkey :-).

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

An additional complexity, that I have to remember for the first time this year, is that lots of stuff is closed Thursday, and restaurants that are open tend to be fully booked. We're delaying Thanksgiving dinner until Sunday this year, so I've had to think about making sure there's something to eat on Thursday.

[carbonel]

Well, this is the first year in roughly forever that I haven't gone to Chicago to be with family for Thanksgiving, so that's the big thing that I'll miss. (I have a lot of work to do, and it just made more sense to stay in town.)

As for the foods associated with Thanksgiving that I particularly enjoy, the main ones are sweet potatoes (made fresh, not canned, and brown sugar and butter, marshmallows not really desired) and stuffing (no celery, or so cooked it doesn't crunch).

For the last several years, I've been bringing a Guinness ginger cake to our family Thanksgiving, but last year it totally failed to rise (I suspect either a beer failure or a baking powder failure) and I did not bring the inch-high bricklike object. So that's something else that's missing.

[redbird]

I was chatting with a vegetarian coworker last night, and observed that if I was doing a Thanksgiving feast without meat, I'd just do all the side dishes, the sweet potatoes and apple crisp and green beans (adrian_turtle really wants those) and cranberry relish (which goes nicely on bread or on a spoon) and so on.

We're getting sneaky this year and instead of me making a sweet potato thing and cattitude doing glazed onions, will have a big plate of roast vegetables including sweet potatoes, onions, and probably cauliflower.

Beyond that, it might be nice to have my mother there, but the travel would be a bit much, and there's something very cozy about doing the holiday with just Cattitude and Adrian.

[redbird]

I do sympathize. Note that there will be all of three people at our Thanksgiving; I can imagine a few others I might want to add, but one is on the other side of an ocean, and two others don't celebrate the holiday in the first place or have it as vacation time.