@VeryHappy your story made me laugh harder than I have in a long time!
One year while our turkey was cooking, the oven door blew up and spewed hot popping little pieces of glass all over the kitchen floor. I was in the bedroom and my husband came in and yelled “go look in the kitchen!” So I ran in to see what was going on and was looking at the disaster scene when I realized my husband hadn’t followed me to the kitchen. I went looking for him and found him on the couch watching a football game!
Yes, he did help me clean up the mess. I can’t remember if it was during commercials, but that seems likely. And our turkey was great; only the outer glass had broken.
@MaineLonghorn : The five seconds of silence was the funniest silence I’ve ever experienced.
One year, when we all had infants, SIL cancelled T-giving at her house at the last minute because her baby was sick. DH went to the grocery store T-gving morning and bought a frozen turkey we then had to defrost in water. I wasn’t excited about going through all that, but he couldn’t imagine not having turkey.
A few years ago, I was reheating stuffing in the microwave. When I took it out, in my haste, the microwave door swung back, knocked into the bowl, and I dropped it on the floor. There went that bowl and the stuffing. Fortunately, I hadn’t reheated all the stuffing, so we still had some, but no leftovers. The serendipitous part of the disaster is that I bought a nice set of clear bowls with lids to replace the bowl I dropped. Best kitchen purchase I ever made.
One year I invited my friend that grew up in India to Thanksgiving dinner at my parents house. Of course, that was the year the turkey caught on fire and had to be pulled from the oven to pat out the flames. It was years later when that friend revealed that she thought that was a tradition!
These are great! Thanks for the lighthearted stories.
I forgot about (because it didn’t happen at my house)
The first year that my now DIL came to our thanksgiving meal. She decided to make pecan pie bars, being just out of college she baked it in a glass pan.
Do not bake pecan pie bars in a glass pan. The whole pan broke in her rented apartment stove, pecan pie filling everywhere. Poor thing!
The year my husband and I got married, I wanted to make Thanksgiving dinner for my family and my hubby’s family, from scratch. I stayed up all night and sometime around 3 a.m. I got to the cranberry sauce. I used the recipe on the bag, which said to put the cooked berries in the blender; I did. The blender blades got stuck, so I opened the lid and tried to “un-jam” it with a wooden spoon. I had forgotten to turn the power off, so it dislodged and got caught on the spoon which sent pureed cranberries all over me and our ceiling. My hubby hears me scream, runs down and finds me and the kitchen covered in cranberries with berries dripping from the ceiling. All we could do was laugh ? let me tell you cranberry stains do not come off white builder grade flat paint. 23 years later and every year our family retells the story of our first Thanksgiving 
I have two stories…one nice and one funny.
First the nice.
We visited DS in London over Thanksgiving week. We took all the fixings for Thanksgiving dinner with us (canned potatoes, canned sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, stove top stuffing, peas, corn, canned gravy). We bought a couple of rotisserie chickens it was great!
The funny…
When I was 19, my vacation employer gave everyone a turkey. So I took one too. My best friend and I had never cooked a thanksgiving dinner before. She lived with her dad, so we did it there. When I say we didn’t know what we were doing, that’s an understatement. Yes, we cooked the turkey with the giblet bag and neck right inside the turkey. Yes we stuffed it too…never noticed the bag of giblets?♀️. We didn’t have a meat thermometer and the turkey didn’t have one of those pop up things. We made all the other side dishes…horrible…canned corn, that green bean casserole thing, some brown and serve rolls, and mashed potatoes. Problem was…they were all done a LONG time before the turkey even looked brown.
We waited and waited…seemed like hours for that turkey to get done. Then we made gravy…which of course had more lumps than anything else. We tried to carve the turkey but to say it was a hack job is being nice. We warmed all the sides up in saucepans on the stove. Oh…and we had to separate the stuffing from the giblets and their paper holder.
The turkey was not done…it was rather pink. We did know that “rare turkey” wasn’t a thing.
The table looked great, and her dad ate every thing we served. I have to confess…I don’t think we did. He never complained once about any of the over or undercooked Foods.
I will say, we did a Thanksgiving together about 20 years later, and it was fabulous…because we actually knew what we were doing!
I have a Christmas dinner mishap - H wanted to open this special bottle of Belgian beer that is fermented in the bottle. It’s called Fantôme. He opened it at the table as we all sat down to eat. The ENTIRE bottle came out the top like Old Faithful, hit the ceiling, and rained down on all of us! MIL’s hair was dripping, BIL had the great idea to mop the ceiling and walls, and I was finding traces of that stuff for months in the woodwork. Of course, I had just had our rug cleaned.
Luckily, we had all the dishes in the kitchen so only our individual plates were wet, not the main serving dishes. H tried to take his plate and eat in the kitchen without helping to clean up. He did not succeed!
Back in the days when we were still freshly married, we hosted a “post-Thanksgiving” dinner. The guests included Mr.'s boss and his spouse. One of the guests brought a nice bottle of red, which the dinner crowd oohed about. To my horror, I realized that the wine opener was nowhere to be found. Mr. to the rescue! He told the guests how back in his college days, poor students used to open wine without wine openers… and he demonstrated how - by pushing the cork into the bottle. Yup, that would work., but… Oh my. He was too excited to notice that the bottle was quite full… and as the cork went in, a fountain of red wine followed! ? I was petrified, but thank goodness everyone had a good laugh.
In case of emergency, you can open a bottle of wine with your shoe: No need to understand French!
I love these stories! A few years ago, when we were still living in Massachusetts, I invited some of the Chinese scholars in our church’s English conversation class to my house for Thanksgiving dinner. I ordered my Turkey from a local farm stand . They said it was a fresh turkey, which I thought meant not frozen. But when I picked it up two days before, it was frozen solid. (I guess “fresh” meant “not rancid?” 
) I had to thaw under running water and had no time to dry brine, but it turned out fine.
I had a friend who was working in Africa and wanted a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for her family, she took a frozen turkey in a rolling suitcase on the plane. I believe her stopover was in London and she found someone to allow her to roll the bag into the walk in freezer. The turkey made it safe and sound and her family enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. This was in the '80s or '90s, way before all the rules that we now enjoy when flying.
I’ve seen that suggestion. I have a feeling a few turkeys wind up on the floor attempting that maneuver!
I went to a Thanksgiving with friends at his co-worker’s home. The turkey was taking forever and so we were all filling up on the appetizers. Another guest kept saying how happy he was about the appetizers as he was a vegetarian and couldn’t have the turkey. My friend had brought an app and crackers and this guy just dug in. He kept oohing and aahing over the app my friend had brought, how good it was, how much he really liked it.
On they way home, I asked my friend, “Wasn’t that Deviled ham?” and she said yes, but he’d already started eating it and it didn’t seem the right thing to say it after the fact.
So now we always ask if she’s making the ‘vegetarian deviled ham’ for Thanksgiving.
(I have to say, it looked like ham, it smelled like ham. He had to know it was HAM!)
Oh dear, the upside-down turkey reminds me of my epic Thanksgiving fail. It was our first year hosting for the extended family. Kids were 1 & 3. Told DH to take them out for an adventure while I cooked and cleaned the house. I had read about starting upside down then rotating to breast side up to brown the top. This recipe called for basting with a spray butter occasionally.
So I was on a roll. Cleaning the house, basting the turkey, setting the table … except for one basting I accidentally had Windex in my hand and not spray butter. Oops. It was still upside down at that point. I washed it off, flipped it over and crossed my fingers. All went well, but I confessed to DH in the morning. He got a good laugh and said it was too good not to share and outed me for serving the only turkey you could see your reflection in.
For some reason the extended family still comes here, but I’m glad expectations were set low.
Years ago, my mom made rolls that were hard as a hockey puck. Like chip your teeth hard. We told her they weren’t edible and she was like oh, they can’t be that bad and walked away.
My sister chucked one at her and it lightly hit her from behind and she goes “ouch! What was that???” .
When she realized it was a hockey puck roll she burst out laughing and threw them all away. We still joke about it every year when we see the rolls come out.
Ah yes, it wasn’t Thanksgiving but I was trying to impressH’s friends when we attended a party and I made chocolate croissants. Unfortunately I didn’t taste and and later wondered why they weren’t consumed—you guessed it, they were hard as rocks! Yikes! I had never baked croissants in humid HI and they had been great when I had made them in drier CA!
Never baked for H’s friends again!
My grandmother always started the turkey upside down. The inside juices that drip down keep the breast moist.
Nowadays, we don’t always use the whole bird. Just buy the breast and the large legs more stores sell nowadays, that look so medieval. I think it was last year that I made filet and just legs and it was the legs that everyone wanted first. (Truth: I buy them made by my local butcher and reheat later. He cooks them just under temp for those who will later reheat.)
One of our first Thanksgivings as a couple, I planned to cook a turkey for the first time. I asked my sister for advice and she explained a fool proof way to cook a turkey in a greased brown paper bag.
It was quite an undertaking in that tiny apartment kitchen, greasing that bag, getting the turkey inside, putting it in one of those disposable aluminum pans from the grocery store…
And it came out underdone. We were so disappointed and so hungry!
I think that started the whole “the turkey is NOT our favorite part” sentiment, but it took a few more tries before we switched, permanently, to steak & our favorite side dishes!