How are you celebrating Thanksgiving?

Home alone, as we prefer it. My daughter has 24 guests and hearing "Please pass the ___" repeatedly is just not thrilling. My son works late on Thanksgiving Eve so he'll spend it with his girlfriend and her family.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Wow! Never been first on the reply!

I have to work this year so we have already had T-giving dinner with our kids. Hubby and I will probably go to one of the buffets somewhere when I get off for dinner.

Next year I will do it all out again at home!

Please remember that no-one else in the world celebrates Thanksgiving other than the US and Canada!

I'm blessed to enjoy Thanksgiving at friends' home as I work the day before and after.

Kniphofia ~ does your country not have a day in which you give thanks and enjoy the fruits of your labor? If not, they should.. it allows us to gorge ourselves on food we shouldn't eat and seems to be the "kick off" for grazing from now thru Christmas.

Im taking mom to my sisters house. My nephew loves to cook. My brother is going out of town. Im looking forward to the day with family and freinds
I want to take a prime rib roast

I will get to spend Thanksgiving day in my garden....family is scattered and working....and we are all giving thanks for the working part....grin

I can not think of a better place to take time for being thankful for all the good and kind things that have happened this past year....or thanks for surviving the not so good.

I hope you each have a moment to enjoy and share and appreciate the wonders of nature and her bounty.

We are hosting at our house with hubby's bro and sis and their spouses. As I get older I appreciate the huge family get togethers more. My side of the family is spread out all over the country.

Going to my cousin's Thanksgiving night for a big family bash...(all I'm responsible for are cooked apples) Sunday, our immediate family is gathering at my sister's house..(I have lots of responsibilities and tasks that day...starting with the turkey)

Home alone too...
Will be spending it with my cat Max. :)

Going to my SIL's house. She's has the cousins coming too.

We will be celebrating it with my gang of 5 and as always have over ,ever since we met a day after September 11 th 2001,with our 2 closest friends,who have their family too far away to visit.I have had always an open door policy in our house for the holidays, friends , family and assorted acquantences are always welcome and the more the merrier; and this year we have 2 extra; my oldest best friend from Canada,for his first American Thanksgiving and my youngests roommate from a summer job up in Northern Maine ,since he can not travel to Chicago.Have a peaceful Thanksgiving !!! BB

We have a cat named Max also Pinger....the kitties all get canned food to celebrate...they are so spoiled...not to mention the 3 dogs, so never really alone...grin

Celebrating by cooking dinner at my In-law's house along with D.H. and assorted other relatives. It will be o.k. Very traditional. But, I really look forward to our turkey mole dinner with friends on the weekend!

Just the 2 of us (and the cats and ferrets), neither of us are big turkey people so we're having roast beef. I think a comparable event in other countries would be the various harvest celebrations.

We voted "We've already celebrated Thanksgiving in Canada", and that was a lie, but about the closest we can come on this poll.
We are expatriate U.S. Americans in France.
Every year, so-called "Thanksgiving" comes well after harvest here. At the end of November, the harvests have long been brought in, processed cellared, etc., and the fields are sere, the days drear and "thanksgiving" long past.
So, although we have only spent occasional weekends in Vancouver to relax and enjoy the food, a passing week for a UN Conference in Montreal (which niftily coincided with the Montreal Jazz Festival!) and some good hiking in Waterton-Peace National Park, we chose to opt for Canadian Thanksgiving this year!
It was perfect! We were, indeed, at the culmination of our harvest. Except for the turkey wings (more on that later), everything came from the last harvests of the garden. When we sat down to dinner, we were truly able to give thanks for the bounties of our harvest.
In terms of a "Thanksgiving meal", it probably was our best and most meaningful.

[Turkey Wings; Me and the French butchers have this ongoing skirmish. At any time of year, I can buy fresh turkey wings at any butcher or supermarket in France. Just to be clear, these are not wimpy little things, but full-fledged turkey wings.
Want a turkey? You can only buy them from 1 December to some indiscriminate date in early/mid January. Ask why? "Well, monsieur, the turkeys, they have to mature, and they are only mature after 1 December." "So, where did these turkey wings come from"? "Eh?' "These wings here, la bas, in front of both our faces". "Oh, but those are just wings." "So, where are the rest of the turkeys?" "Quelles restes? These are the wings." "OK, so where are the turkeys to which these wings were originally attached?" "I don't speak very good English, monsieur".

Happy Thanksgiving, all!
Potagere

~the moonhowl: if canned catfood is Thanksgiving treat, what do you feed those poor children the rest of the year?

The kitties are raised on Purina Dry senior food every morning and they share a can of Friskies chicken or tuna wet food with their dry food in the evening. On holidays each one gets their own individual favorite Fancy Feast canned food along with dry....been the routine for 13 years for Mea and Maxima and 5 for Bobstreporus..the current brood. They all get a small dish of broth every time we make a new batch, and the occassional bit of shrimp or crawfish, fish or chicken. Of course we are rural enough that they sometimes supplement their diet with the unfortunate mouse or mole...which they are quick to share....grin

We had a luvy Canuck Turkey Day and we will have a luvly US Turkey Day too. One cannot have too many Turkey Days IMPO. We will celebrate on Sunday though because for some stupid reason we are expected to work on US Turkey Day :(

we're frying 5 turkeys for various friends in the neighborhood. we'll have one for ourselves of course! stuffing and sweet potatoes for the sides and a quiet evening at home with the cat and the dogs will round out our holiday.

We usually just have a small dinner with me, mom dad and my dad's mom...oh AND the dog of course, lol! Theres always a turkey, naturally, but this year mom is trying some things from the Food Network channel, mainly things from Paula Deen.

Jim that is too funny about the turkey wings!

Doug

I'm gonna make a few points here and then I will shut up until I am agitated
(Those who know me know how easily I am agitated)

Should kitties be raised on Senior Cat Food?
My 18-year-old Siamese would say not.

I know that "being rural" does not mean you treat your cats like my Granpa's barn animals, but Mei-Mei, Misha, Katy & Bella claim that the graduated diets now available are good things. I am reconciled to burying Mei-Mei and Misha, probably even Katy the Leukemia Cat, but what a diet of American cat food can do for kittens like Bella, pulled tout of a dumpster, is amazing


Mei-Mei, 18, pedigreed Thai Siamese, still thinks she's 8
Misha, about 17-18, bought for 30cents in a Tajik food market. even after 4 cancer surgeries is the light of my life (the only one who can type!)
Katy, now about 10; MS, epilepsy, dumped on our doorstep in Macedonia (the foreigners will deal with her); now she has leukemia; all we can do is make sure she continues to have a good life. She's so sweet!
Bella: Turkish Van thrown in a dumpster. Almost 10, still a bit sauvage, but she knows her home and her people and is almost as protective as the Corgi

Along with Ms Marta, the love of my life and Conan the Barkarian, who imagines himself a great warrior,
Rachel Sioux, true warrior daughter, fighting the good fight for the underprivileged,
and my most precious grandchildren,
Elissa the Blonde and the Brave,
JJ, who is still finding his place in a yet bewildering world,
and Queen Abby, who only 2 is already clearly the one who will rule us all.

For these I give thanks, Now and Forever
Like the first Pilgrims, give thanks for no nation
For they had none

I give thanks for those I have named above
And for you, my DG friends
For seeds
For gardens
For crops shared with others

I hope
Yes I truly HOPE
that everyone of us Dave's Gardeners can hold just one seed in our hand on our own day of Thanksgiving and think of one child, one family that would be happier, more filled with joy, more like what we would want our family to be on Thanksgiving if they had this seed growing in their garden.

And, I'll bet you, that if even half those Dave Gardeners, when they opened their hands and looked at those seeds and just thought a little about what they could do with their lives could change our world beyond recognition.

I, too, am ROFLMBO, Jim! Too funny! You did have an amazing harvest this year! You would've been quite the farmer in the pilgrim/pioneer days! :-)

Your second post was nicely worded, JIm! Cheers!!!

I taught my oldest son well! He is cleaning his own house, fixing the turkey - fully stuffed no less, and providing the drinks! I am cooking and bringing everything else! Not a bad trade-off! :-) Now if I can just teach/train my other two kids to be as self-sufficient and to help me cook all the other fixins'! (sigh) It takes years and years of coaxing to motivate my offspring to cook! LOL! ... And unfortunately, gardening is completely out of the picture for the kiddos. Though ... my oldest is starting to take a slight interest this year after I shared some Japanese Morning Glory seeds with him (which he grew out) and I bought him a Bonsai tree for his birthday! :-) There IS still hope that they might all come around to enjoying cooking and gardening! :-) And hopefully, I will see it in my lifetime! LOL!

I am thankful for my family, my friends (DG friends, too!), my pets, and all the garden creatures and plants in my yard! I've come to learn that all the good things in life can be found right at home. :-)

This message was edited Nov 23, 2009 8:26 PM

Hosting Thanksgiving for all the fam for the first time (!!) They behave best when they're at my house lol.

**Waves to Jim** good to see you again... been a while.

I'm cooking this year... very low key... I love to spend the day watching Football. [thank heavens i wont have to endure a Bears game] There will only be 4 of us i think. [plus two firkids] I am making Lasagna as i do not want to spend the entire day in the kitchen.

My daughter is hosting her first Thanksgiving this year. I will be there early to help her get everything on the table at the same time, the hardest part. This will be the first time in over 30 years I didn't have to clean the house, it should be fun.

Hosting TG at our house or my niece's has become a tradition over the last 4 years. As the family gets bigger, so does the menu for others to bring! Probably small to some but we're hosting 12 and counting.

"OK, so where are the turkeys to which these wings were originally attached?" That's what I would like to know. My brain has all these images running though it and none of them pleasant! LOL

This message was edited Nov 24, 2009 8:50 AM

That's exactly what I was thinking when I read that. The question is, do the turkeys that show up later still have their own wings?

Then I thought of John Madden's Turducken at the football game every year that had 8 legs. Maybe someone's come up with an 8-winged turkey?

We are going to a friend's house but I voted 'our celebration includes friends from all walks of life' because that is really the reason behind going to our friends. We will have 23 people of several different nationalities and ages from 2 to 87. Everyone will bring a few dishes so it is really a joint celebration.
I'm responsbible for two kinds of pies (pumpkin and pecan), sweet potatoes, a vegan main course and brussels sprouts.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I personally have a lot to be thankful for. DG is one of those things!

This message was edited Nov 24, 2009 5:40 AM

This year we are heading for DD house. Pick up my MIL along the way. (Of course DW will help cook.) DD in-laws will be there as well.
Over the years we have had not very big celebrations. We are 200 miles from the close relatives.
Our favorite Thanksgivings are the ones we shared with less fortunate in our community. Probably 5 or 6 years we have hosted a person that had nowhere to spend the holiday.
The best part of it is the smiles on their faces as they head for home. We know we made a nice day out of one that would have been lonely for them otherwise.

Happy Thanksgiving!
Have a Great Day!
Bernie

Just immediate family because of a few special diets; including 2 vegetarian adults and 1 diabetic child; because it's easiest for us to meet their dietetic needs. We'll be serving tofurkey, sugar-free crustless pumpkin pie, and lots of green vegetables. Then, we'll have the traditional dishes for those of us who can and will indulge!

Here in Canada, we celebrate Thanksgiving in the second week of October the Monday of a three-day weekend. Canadian Thanksgivng is the same as the US Thanksgiving as far as the fare, consisting of Turkey, Stuffing and Gravy, Pumkin Pie, etc, but where we differ is in the theme. Whereas American Thanksgiving is all about the historical feast of the Pilgrims and Indians, Canadians traditionally celebrate as a liturgical festival, Thanksgiving corresponds to the English and continental European Harvest festival, with churches decorated with cornucopias, pumpkins, corn, wheat sheaves, and other harvest bounty, ^_^

my DH bought a turkey from the Hutterites for Thanksgiving (In Oct - Canadian), and it turned out to be a 28 lb'er! We stuck it in the freezer, and will invite a whack of friends for our Christmas feast.
For Thanksgiving we bought some turkey & chicken parts. We don't have family here in Calgary, so spent it with just the 2 of us. We vegged out all day, and didn't get out of pj's until about 5pm, at which time it was almost pointless, eh? lol

~Susan~

Son, DIL, and I head for the ocean coast - rustic resort - 4th year for doing this. All the pieces of the traditional dinner go along - but I don't have to wrestle a turkey carcass. So many items are now available in ready made form at the supermarket. I DO make stuffing at home, however.

DS and his GF will be joining us. When I called last night, they were making their contribution: Jamaican Pumpkin Cheesecake. It contains rum and dark chocolate. How could this NOT be delicious???

Got a recipe??????

I am with Melody....please snag their recipe....grin With chocolate and cheesecake it can't be anything but divine...grin and Rum to boot? Whoo-hoo

YUM!! me wants!!

Jamaican Chocolate Cheesecake?!?!?!
begging - "pretty please?!"

~Susan~

I'll ask for it & post as soon as I get it!