Heather says:
This week we’ve discussed our favorite Thanksgiving dishes. Now it’s time to ‘fess up and share the worst thing you’ve ever tasted at the Turkey Day table.
I’m not sure if the dish that immediately springs to mind was ill-prepared or simply a travesty to start, but I will never forget a dressing that contained both large giblet chunks and rubbery slivers of slimy hard boiled egg. Somewhere a relative committed a culinary sin and I was the hapless victim.
What holiday dish sends a chill down your spine?
Oyster stuffing.
My grandfather would make it every year, and almost every year I could never tell which stuffing was oyster and which one was plain. OH…it is awful.
My aunt once made mashed sweet potatoes. Unfortunately, she didn’t so much mash them as she did puree them. They resembled a thick gravy. And that’s how I ended up pouring mashed sweet potatoes on my mashed potatoes. It is not a combination I would endorse or recommend. (I was happy to learn, however, that I was not the only one in attendance to make this error.)
oh the horrors of oyster stuffing! who thought that was a good idea? also the year my mom went overboard with the Hawaiian thanksgiving recipe book and made PINEAPPLE stuffing. I love pineapple, but it was so out of place! (the gingered carrots became a staple however)
Ok I really have to laugh that people have now, out of 3 posts, mentioned oyster stuffing twice. Growing up, from about age 11, I was a vegetarian, and so the kind of seafood stuff that would gross out your average person horrified me all the more. I have never eaten the stuff, but my grandfather continues to make it every year, and I just stear CLEAR.
I am not sure if it was thanksgiving or not (our family makes ham at thanksgiving and easter), but my aunt didn’t quite calculate the time to cook the ham correctly.
It was in TWO HOURS longer than it should have been. Needless to say it took a lot of gravy and smiling to get it down.
One year my step-grandmother made Thanksgiving dinner, and her mashed potatoes were part liquid and part crunchy (like raw potato crunchy). My cousins and I were in our early teens, and still sitting at the kids’ table, and about halfway through dinner, my very-politically-correct mom came in and said “We’ll meet you at McDonald’s in half an hour.” My step-grandmother fortunately never found out what was so funny…
A few years ago my mom made some kind of cranberry thing in a jello mode. I don’t know WHAT it was supposed to be, but it had chunks of stuff in it and supposedly she followed a recipe. It was really pretty looking, but MAN was it gross. It was so funny because she hadn’t tasted it before setting it out, and like 5 of us took a bite at the same time and gave each other panicked looks. It was funny and she’ll never live it down. She’ll also never again serve something at a meal that she hasn’t tasted beforehand. 🙂
Another time she made hummus that tasted like athlete’s foot cream. That was nasty. (and how do I know what athlete’s foot cream tastes like? Well, once when it was dark and I wasn’t wearing my glasses, I put foot cream on my tooth brush.)
I just found out Mom is serving Lasagna at her Thanksgiving. It’s pretty bad. Bad enough that Grandma would hand us each a $5 and we’d sneak out for lo mein when this was on the menu. It’s basically, undercooked broken noodles, overcooked grainy beef in this horribly watered down greasy, soupy cheese mess in the bottom. I don’t think she drains the beef or the noodles properly. It’s SO gross.
Ditto for her beef stew. Ugh!
In 1993, my one year in Charleston, I was working retail management without an assistant and was too dang exhausted to even THINK about Thanksgiving Dinner. A mall store friend invited me over to their house for dinner. What fun, I thought, no cooking, no cleaning, no mess, just eat and gab and come home and fall into a coma. We were standing in the kitchen pretending to be assisting in food preparation when I observed that the Friend was combining ingredients for her version of Stuffing/Dressing, whateve. She turned on the hot water faucet and stuck the dressing tray under the faucet, covering the stuff. I realized with shock that this was her idea of supplying the needed liquid. Darhling retells this story today with the dramatization of the shock and disgust on my face……:P. I think she committed a Mortal sin by not using a meat broth or even bouillon water for chris’ sake!
My husband and I both love sweat potatoes. about four years ago I was incharge of bring the sweat potatoes for Thanksgiving. I had to work and sent my husband to the store the day before to pick up the sweat potatoes. He came home with them and as I was making it I thought it was weird that they were white on the inside. He still swears it said sweat potato on the sing where he got them, but they did not at all taste like a sweat potato or a regular potato for that matter. I do not know what it was, but I do know what it wasn’t!
We also had the year my mom made pumpkin pie and forgot the sugar. We had to add lots of ice cream to that pie:)
I agree…Oyster dressing is pretty nasty stuff. Then again, I still don’t understand the yam and marshmallow topping either.
not a thanksgiving but funny: rabbit was on the menu, someone forgot to tell the cook, that buck shot had been used to acquire the rabbits, needless to say, crunchy, and several of the ‘men/boys’ began tossing pellets at each other from table to table.
I’ve never had oyster stuffing, it doesn’t sound good so that maybe why…..
Oh my….three years ago I was visiting my father whilst pregnant with my youngest. We were invited to his friends’ house for Thanksgiving dinner. My 7 month pregnant appetite was ready for some serious eating!! That was until I saw the food laid out.
Never in my life…..
Goose (ugh, dont’ even get me started on GOOSE. Greasy and when stuffed with Wild Rice (that my hostess may have literally gone out and picked herself it was so “wild” looking) it had a horrible flavor.
Asparagus (not a fan of this vegetable, never have been and the sauce used on it was very pungeant in smell!)
Oysters (ugh….)
NO BREAD on the menu…..who doesn’t serve bread or stuffing at Thanksgiving?
Dessert: English Pudding. Do you know what this is? It is pudding that sits around at room tempurature and ferments and you keep increasing it by adding milk or some other perishable liquid . You make it months ahead of time. Argh…..this is the only dessert I have to admit being afraid of.
***So I literally ate nothing and couldn’t even nibble on some bread to appear as if I was chewing.
I excused myself, went home and microwaved a frozen pizza.
I LOVE the traditional foods. I will never accept another Holiday meal invite without finding out the menu items beforehand again! Bring on the turkey, stuffing and cranberries!
For a few years now, I have been deprived of my beloved sweet potato casserole in favor of sweet potato rings. Basically, this is the sweet potato part of what would be a casserole (the part people leave on the plate after eating the crunchy pecan goodness) plopped onto a pineapple ring and topped with 2 tiny marshmellows and baked. They make my teeth hurt while I pine for my childhood favorite. Ahh, the things we go through for family. And I would happily bring my own if there weren’t already 4 other potato dishes on the menu. So, suffer in silence I will and make up for it with a double dose of pecan pie!
I can’t remember the worst (probably some sort of green beans, I hate those), but one year our chef uncle decided he would make some fancy organic turkey or something. He used all sorts of fancy techniques with it, and orange slices on the outside of the skin, to retain the moisture or something.
No one liked the orange-flavored turkey (although it was indeed moist). Luckily my dad anticipated exactly this situation, and he always barbeques his own turkey because that’s the way he likes it. It went quickly while the orange turkey was banished to leftover limbo. 🙂
Y’all are scaring me with the oyster dressing stories – my husband has asked for this…I’ve had it before and it was weird but not gross. But I haven’t MADE it before. *Crossing fingers* I can be sure of at least one appreciative audience, no matter how it comes out: our dogs, who will eat anything (even jalapenos)…so at least the shame won’t linger…
Grossest Thanksgiving dish ever: a mother-in-law’s spotted dick pudding (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotted_Dick). Just say ‘no’ to English puddings. They’re all vile. But this one was extra nasty because of the custard sauce, which tasted like burned eggs. *shudder*
Chicken Cake with pineapple topping. Ummmmmm.. Tasty 🙂