The Night I Shaved the Turkey and Other Tales of Thanksgiving Disaster
From the horrifying to the amusing, our readers share their tales of Thanksgiving disasters. We encourage you to do the same!
By Yankee Magazine|Nov 24 2021|
Coffee By Design | Portland, Maine
Photo Credit : Katherine KeenanIt wouldn’t be the holiday season without a few mishaps. Now a Yankee classic, this 1994 collection of reader-submitted Thanksgiving disasters (both funny and tragic) is one of our favorites. We hope you’ll share your own stories of Thanksgiving shame, horror, and hilarity in the comments below. It always helps to know you’re not alone when your cat takes a nap in the bowl of mashed potatoes.
Our Favorite Thanksgiving Disaster Stories
Uncle Bob Lends a Hand
I spent my first Thanksgiving with my husband in his Irish-Italian neighborhood in New York City. As a newcomer, I was placed in charge of boiling 15 pounds of potatoes. When they were ready, I picked up the pan and surveyed the crowded kitchen for a sink in which to drain them. My husband’s elderly uncle Bob guided me to a small half-bathroom and grabbed the steaming pot. He started to drain the potatoes into the toilet, but he lost his grip on the lid and all the potatoes tumbled in! I screamed, “Oh no!” but Uncle Bob began fishing the potatoes out of the toilet. “No one will ever know,” he whispered. “Now just go out there and mash them.”
Sometime later, during the meal, my husband’s Aunt Tot leaned over and whispered, “Your potatoes are delicious. I think you are going to fit into this family quite nicely.”
— Robin McCutchan in Oxford, Ohio
A Close Shave
I prepared my first Thanksgiving dinner ever in 1960. My husband was a ship’s pilot and was not due home until around 3:00 A.M. Thanksgiving Day, so I ordered a 25-pound, fresh-killed turkey from the local butcher. It was delivered in a paper bag the day before Thanksgiving. I put it in the refrigerator to be dealt with later. That night I fed, bathed, and put to bed our three children. I set the table for 16 guests and made the stuffing, sweet potatoes, twice-baked potatoes, cranberry sauce, apple pie, pumpkin pie, and more. It was 2:00 A.M. before I took the turkey out of the refrigerator.
As I opened the bag, I nearly fainted. There was the turkey — feathers and all. I tried to pull the feathers out, but it didn’t work. At that hour there was no one I could call for help. I was beginning to get hysterical.
I went into the bathroom to get some tissues to dry my tears when I saw the answer to my problem right on the bathroom counter. You can imagine my husband’s surprise an hour later, when he walked into the house and saw his very tired wife crying and shaving the turkey with his Norelco electric shaver!
P.S. It worked fine, and my husband is still using his electric shaver.
— Adele Licata in Cape Coral, Florida
Catnaps
When the time came to serve Thanksgiving dinner, I mashed the potatoes and spooned them into a beautiful serving bowl. I turned away to get a carving knife for the turkey, and when I glanced back at the bowl of mashed potatoes, I was horrified to see Pepper the cat had decided it was the right place for a nap! Speechlessly I tugged on my wife’s shirt and nodded toward the bowl. Her eyes widened in disbelief, but we composed ourselves, shooed Pepper out of the bowl and scraped off the top layer of potatoes.
— William C. Noren in North Plainfield, New Jersey
Mother-in-Law of the Year
I had my daughter, Sue, and her husband, Gary, to my house for Thanksgiving dinner, 1992. I had a ham baking in the oven and a turkey out in the garage, where I kept my electric roaster. When dinner was ready, I asked Gary to bring the turkey in to be carved. Soon after, we heard a terrible noise and a loud yell. Gary had lost control of the foil roasting pan, leaving turkey all over the car and garage floor. I was upset and so was Gary, but I tried to make light of the situation. “That’s one turkey we won’t have to pick meat off the bone,” I said.
P.S. Sorry I can’t type better. I slipped and fell in the garage, right where the turkey grease had been. I’ve never told Gary!
— Dorothy Beckman in Springfield, Missouri
99% Pure
My girlfriend, brought up by her mother and live-in grandmother, never learned anything about cooking. But, with a cookbook and a lot of confidence, she decided to cook Thanksgiving dinner for the entire family. After reading the directions about cleaning and stuffing the bird, she went ahead and did so, then put it into the oven. After a few hours, she checked on the bird and found it foaming all over the oven. She had cleaned it with Ivory Soap.
— Kathy Tarmasewica in Westminster, Massachusetts
Cold Turkey
When Ken and Lydia were given a turkey to raise for Thanksgiving, Lydia took on the responsibility with enthusiasm. She fed it, talked to it, and, far ahead of time, invited both sets of parents to the big dinner. As the days drew closer to the holiday, though, Lydia became more and more quiet. Finally, on the day before the big feast, Lydia burst into tears and told Ken, “I can’t do it.” Ken calmed her and promised to take care of everything. He went outside, and after a short while, returned with a limp turkey under his arm, trailing a whiff of chloroform. Putting the bird in the refrigerator, he suggested they go to bed and deal with dinner preparations in the morning.
The next day, Lydia woke early and went into the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator door and out flapped the turkey. Her screams brought Ken rushing down to find his wife on the floor in a dead faint and the turkey tottering unsteadily around the room. When Lydia revived, Ken had put the turkey out in the yard, where it lived out its life free from stress and fear of extinction. As for us, we decided to go out to eat. No one ordered turkey.
— Margaret Reinhart in Tucson, Arizona
Excerpt from “The Night I Shaved the Turkey and Other Harrowing Tales of Thanksgiving Disaster,” Yankee Magazine, November 1994.
Do you have a Thanksgiving disaster story of your own? Share it in the comments!
On our 1st year of wedded bliss,my wife decided to have Thanksgiving at our house with the family. She had all the trimmings and the turkey was roasting.The family arrived and we all chatted and had snacks. An hour went by and my wife said,” the turkey is not roasted”,” It should have been done by now”. Another half hour went by and the turkey was not done. I looked at the oven temp control and she had set the temp at the wrong setting. Needless to say we did have the turkey even though it took 4 hrs plus. LOL It was delicious and everyone was happy.
While cleaning the inside of the turkey one of my fingernails broke. I could not locate the fingernail so I stuffed the turkey,roasted it and served it will the fear that one of our guests would have to spit it out and ruin the entire meal. Well no one found the fingernail, or found it and kept quiet. I’ll never know.
In 1962, we were living in a small town in Holland. In order to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday with our children and Dutch friends, we ordered a turkey from the local butcher. I picked up the turkey, all wrapped, and put it in the refrigerator to prepare after the children had gone to bed. When we opened the package, we found our turkey cleaved neatly down the center. After our initial shock and after careful consideration, working as a team, my husband held the bird together while I took needle and thread and sewed it back together. We then stuffed the bird. None was the wiser when we carved it at Thanksgiving dinner. The next time we ordered our turkey, we made sure to instruct the butcher to leave it intact.
We were due to leave on a trip out of the country just a few days after Thanksgiving, so I suggested to my husband that we get a turkey breast that year and have a low key meal that would not involve a lot of clean up. He said we should get the whole bird, as Thanksgiving just wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without it. Even though there would only be three of us for dinner, he got a turkey so large we needed a 13 gallon trash bag to brine it. Two days before Thanksgiving, he placed the fresh bird in the bag on the kitchen counter and proceeded to pour in gallon after gallon of salty water. As the bag reached capacity, he turned away to get a tie for it. The moment he let go of the bag, half of the contents spilled out over the counter and waterfalled onto the floor, rushing underneath the refrigerator and pooling under the counter. We quickly righted the bag and got to work cleaning. An hour and a half and half a bottle of bleach spray later, we had the situation pretty much contained. As I wiped up the last bit of spill underneath the bag, it tipped to the other side of the counter and the remaining contents, with the bird, drenched the other side of the kitchen, with some of the brine running underneath the dishwasher. Two hours and the remainder of the bleach spray bottle later, we agreed the poor bird had to go to “turkey heaven.” The next day, my husband arrived home with another bird, assuring us it’d be fine because he’d be dry-brining this time. He spent the morning preparing the bird with the dry brine, while my daughter and I went out for the day. When we got back, it was dark, but there was a light shining from the kitchen. It was the refrigerator. The door was ajar, and the inside temperature read 81 degrees! The poor bird was sweating. Turkey heaven. We ended up finding a turkey breast at our local butcher. Some time after that, we were out and asked our daughter if she wanted to stop for a turkey burger for dinner. She responded, “no, let’s just leave the poor turkeys to their business.”
Here in Connecticut we are able to have pastel turkeys thanks to Gozzi’s Turkey Farm. Our kids when they were young thought the color of the bird indicated its flavor. Like yellow ones were lemon and pink were strawberry.
Gozzi’s Turkey Farm – in Guilford, Connecticut. We lived next door in the mid fifties. Great story.
5:30 A.M. Rinsed “the “bird” and left it in the kitchen sink to drain – then added my mother’s time honored French dressing, trussed the turkey and then spread the oil all over. As I lifted up the turkey to place it in the roasting pan it seemed quite slippery…..yes I had used liquid dish soap rather than the oil to baste the turkey. My husband just chuckled – continued reading his newspaper – called my daughter – she and her family laughed while I cried – fortunately there was a chicken restaurant with take out a mile away that was most accomadating This happened 22 years ago. There is always someone who brings it up each – of course with embellishments LOL
I don’t have a Thanksgiving disaster story yet, but after reading the above stories I laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes. Thank you for the laughs!!!
As a child, I was eager to help my mom prepare our Thanksgiving feast. She gave me smaller tasks, such as helping to break the ends off the green beans and peeling the potatoes. I kept looking for more things with which to help. My mom filled the blender with pan drippings and some of the cooked vegetables from the turkey pan, asking me to make the gravy. I enthusiastically pushed the “liquefy” button on the blender, but forgot to hold the lid. The top of the blender blasted off and the entire family and kitchen was splattered with boiling hot gravy, including myself. We spent the next 45 minutes changing our clothes and cleaning the kitchen from top to bottom, bringing Thanksgiving dinner to the table late. My mom’s patient reaction to my mishap (and my dad’s impatient fury) remind me to show the same patience for my own children as they now help me to prepare meals in the kitchen.
The first year I was with my husband, he insisted that we had to have a full-blown turkey meal for his daughter before we had to drive 2 hours to return her to her mother by 1pm. I got up at 3am and started the process. We had turkey and trimmings for breakfast. The cat slept thru the whole thing and we had belly aches the rest of the day. I told him that was the first and last time I was doing turkey breakfast. The good thing was that we had all the leftovers which we both think is the best part anyway.
One Thanksgiving while our son was going to college in D.C. My husband and I decided we would drive down and cook everyone an his roommates, a turkey dinner. I brought the native turkey defrosted, with a roasting pan, and all the trimmings with us. I prepared the turkey, after turning the gas oven on, it seemed like a million cockroaches came all out of the stove and oven. The oven had not been used probably in years. I was thankful I had brought the roasting covered pan for use. I kept the oven on killing the bugs on the floor. It took hours to cook as the oven was not working properly, which I had not known. It was lucky it ever it got done. I really can’t remember eating any. This needless to say had taken my appetite away and only the disaster is remembered now, this happened about 1982.
Having only been married 2 months I wanted to cook a Thanksgiving dinner even though we were invited to my husband’s families home for Thanksgiving. I always remembered my mom saying it took 3 days to make Thanksgiving dinner. I was working at a Vermont specialty store at the time and bought a fresh Vermont turkey to cook. I did all the things I remembered seeing mom do I butter the outside I order the inside I filled it with some yummy dressing that I made by myself and put it in the oven of our little apartment stove. About a half an hour later some friends called and said why don’t you come over and join us for a drink for the evening. So not wanting to be rude we said sure turn off the oven left the turkey there and went to enjoy friends. By the time we got home it was way too late to think about cooking so just left the turkey in the oven and went to bed. Got up the next morning and turned it back on and then my mother-in-law called and said can you take me shopping for some things I need. Sure. Turn the oven back off went shopping came home late afternoon turn the oven back on and it began to smell a little bit weird. I let it cook for another couple of hours all the while opening the windows in the apartment because it didn’t really smell great cuz I had remembered it should. Eventually took it out of the oven and took off the foil over the top and oh my God it smelled so bad. So. I took it back to the store that I bought it from and told them that the turkey was bad and I wanted my money back. Not remember I worked there and I was really young maybe 20. They gave me my money back and it was obviously not her fault it was obviously because I was about to poison everybody that would have taken a bite of it because I had tried to cook it like Mom for 3 days!! I’m now in my 70s and I have yet to live down this 3-day turkey.
My story is not as disastrous as most on here but we’re still laughing about it even five years later. I decided to make a pecan pie completely from scratch by a recipe I found online. It’s a great recipe with clear instructions, but I thought that freezing the shell was too time consuming so I decided to skip it. I chilled it again for a short while instead then I proceeded to pour in the filling and bake the pie. About 45 minutes later, I opened the oven and instead of the appetizing dessert that I was expecting, I found a sticky disk that looked more like pizza than pie. It was still tasty, though, so everything turned out well in the end.
As a little girl I wanted to help my mother with the cooking of the Thanksgiving dinner. She thought and finally said, yes you can peel the potatoes, so I pulled up a chair and started peeling. She was busy in the kitchen as we chatted away and when I was finished she looked over and I had peeled the entire 10 pound bag of potatoes for the 6 of us having dinner. She laughed so hard and it is a wonderful memory I have of my mother.
This was me, thinking I was doing a great thing for our oldest son, first time in D.C. and hoping all his roommates would enjoy this meal as well. Never seen a cockroach being from CT. The housemates only used a microwave, or top burners, never the oven.
My sister was very excited to purchase a fresh turkey for our Thanksgiving dinner until she took it out of the refrigerator on Thanksgiving morning. When she opened it up to clean it, she discovered the inside was black and very spoiled. Being Thanksgiving, nothing was open so we could not purchase another turkey. She went to a local restaurant and purchased a whole turkey they had prepared for their buffet.
in 1976 I had decided to invite both families to Thanksgiving dinner even though I had a one month old baby. That is the excuse I will use for the year I set the turkey on fire. I sent my husband to pick up his mother at her apartment in Brighton. I had read an article somewhere that said a grilled turkey would taste better than one cooked in an oven. We had a Weber grill so I had convinced my husband this would work. The coals were ready so I brought the very large turkey( I don’t think my husband ever bought one under 24 lbs.) and placed it on the grill. This was a Butterball therefore infused with- butter. The lid would not fit so I carefully tented the bird with aluminum foil and went inside to prepare all the other sides. Several minutes later I heard a roaring sound, looked outside to see flames shooting from the grill. Quick thinking ,I went inside got a bucket of water and poured it over the turkey. At this point neighbors had gathered . I went inside and called several restaurants to no avail. Finally I wrapped what was left of the bird in more foil and placed it in the oven! Best turkey ever! The presentation was presliced turkey and no wings as they had been totally incinerated.
We had just moved into a brand new house in 1973 and invited many friends over to share our first Thanksgiving in the new house. Once everyone had arrived, the wives helped me put everything on the table. The turkey was a beautiful golden brown and once the carving had begun, we found the insides totally raw. The stoves then had a pre-heat setting on the oven which I had forgotten to set onto heat. We ate dinner about 4 hours later.
One Thanksgiving, we invited my sister and her family to Thanksgiving dinner. There were about 20 of us, each bringing a favorite dish. The turkey and trimmings were all ready at the same time – a feat in itself; but no sister and her family! I had called, several times, but no answer. When they finally arrived, the turkey was cold and the sides (on hot trays) were mushy. The next year, ( when she was invited again) she offered to bring appetizers. When she was late again, we all sat down and ate a delicious meal. She arrived in time for dessert, and ate a cold Thanksgiving dinner.
Good On YOU!
When I was young and first married, we had the whole family to our little house for holidays. We had a cousin of mine who was wont to do the very same thing – and then call when they were 2 hours late and cancel. We decided to do just as you did. When her sister, another cousin, complained that we weren’t waiting for C[redacted] on the first occasion, I just asked her if she wanted a cold plate or a hot plate. Of course I was the villain, but that’s OK.
Haven’t seen those people in years – and don’t miss them! ????
Big big crowd celebrating Thanksgiving including my daughter’s father in law who had dementia and was on leave from the nursing home. Everything went perfectly. Delicious meal, annual basketball shoot love and giving of thanks for all of our blessings. The father-in-law had to go to the bathroom so my daughter and his daughter took him into the toilet prepared to do a diaper change. Time went by and all of a sudden there was screaming and yelling and black smoke coming from the bathroom. They had taken off the dirty diaper and set it down to close to the bathroom candle. What a roaring fire ! No one was injured but when the door opened everyone piled out into the hallway and collapsed on the floor, laughing so hard they were unable to stand. One of the most talked about, memorable holidays ever
I was a young wife and wanted to have a truly old fashioned Thanksgiving dinner. My husband was a hunter (or so I thought!) and I asked him to bring home a wild turkey for Thanksgiving. I had invited family, made all of the delicious recipes I had learned from my grandmother, mom, and mother-in-law. I had cleaned the turkey, dressed it up and roasted it. We all sat down around the table and as the dinner ensued, you kept hearing little ping sounds on the plates around the table. My husband had shot the turkey with whatever ammo has little round balls in it, and as we ate the turkey, we had to spit them out on our plates!! I never asked my great hunter to kill a turkey for Thanksgiving again!
Several years ago , I bought a fresh turkey, a week before Thanksgiving, and was assured by the butcher, that it would be fine in the refrigerator for a week.
On Thanksgiving morning, when I opened the refrigerator door, the most awful stench came out. Upon unwrapping the turkey, my daughter and I saw a moldy mess. My outdoor garbage can smelled for days. We opened all the windows to air out the house, but a turkey breast from my freezer saved the day, albeit without a drumstick.
I met my fiancée’s parents for the first time on Thanksgiving. We were doing the cooking. Did I turn down the wrong knob on the stove? Did I brush up against the oven temperature knob, which was very loose? I’ll never know, but after what seemed an excessive amount of time, I noticed that the oven was at only 140°F. I called the Butterball hotline (or was it the Health Department? It was many years ago), and told them the temperature and duration. They said it’s all good, just crank it up and finish cooking. To make up for lost time I turned the oven up higher than recommended. That evening we ate (or tried to eat) turkey jerky.
I hosted Thanksgiving dinner the year I was pregnant with my first child. I wanted everything to be ready when the guests arrived, so I peeled and cut all the vegetables early in the day. While my family ate assorted appetizers, I turned the heat on high under every pot. In a little while, I smelled something burning. When I checked on the vegetables, I discovered I had neglected to put water in the pans, and every pot was scorched on the bottom. Fortunately, I had almost enough pots to begin again. I transferred the salvageable vegetables to new pots, but I didn’t have one for the boiled onions. No problem, I thought, I’ll cook them in the tea kettle. The vegetables finished cooking, this time with water in the pots, and everything was fine. However, the boiled onions absorbed the minerals from heating water in the tea kettle and turned an unappetizing shade of gray. They still tasted good, and my family ate them without complaints. We all enjoyed laughing at my efficient preparations.