What Was The WORSE Holiday Meal Time You've Had?
By pyewacket
@pyewacket (43903)
United States
November 28, 2008 12:41am CST
Okay here's your chance to rant and rave about the worse holiday meal you've ever had. Many of us have been sharing about our just recent Thanksgiving Dinner fiesta and talked about the food they had, who they shared it with and so forth. So it sounds like most of you had a great time.
Ah!!!!!
Then there are those holiday get togethers or meals that are disasters...maybe the food turned out lousy, family feuds or fights, people being in a rotten, grumpy, grouchy mood or maybe it was some kind of opposite thing, that is some sadness due to a loved one no longer being around, be it a human family member or even a pet companion. Anyway, I think we've ALL had such events...so ...
Here's mine:
This was about eight years ago. Now many of my friends know, that up until some two years ago, my mother and I had a lot of cats (she was a pet hoarder)...while she was the one who thought it was normal to have so many cats, I didn't. Worse yet, even though she in fact created the problem, she didn't lift one finger to help with the cleaning chores. Not a bit. From the moment I got up till the moment I went to bed I was doing round the clock cleaning to keep pet odors down.
Well eight years ago, on a Thanksgiving I was doing my usual knock myself out super duper cooking thing for Thanksgiving dinner. Back then I would get an at least 18-lb turkey and believe me most of the cats got it...LOL. Besides the turkey I had made a nice Cream of Potato soup, the homemade sausage/raisin/walnut stuffing, mashed butternut squash, homemade sweet potato pie, homemade cranberry sauce and biscuits...in other words I was in the kitchen all day long. Now my mother knew how I would knock myself out with cooking and I loved to cook. So in my stupidity I thought, well, gee, maybe she'll actually help out for a change and do the cleaning for me...did she? Nope. She sat on her duff quite literally staring into space not doing anything. When I asked her (nicely)if she could help out with the cleaning, she just looked at me like I was talking in another language. So she continued to sit and do nothing.
Well with the number of cats we had, the cleaning really did have to be done daily, it wasn't something that could be put off. So in between cooking this or cooking that for the Thanksgiving Dinner, I did my usual cleaning routine as well. Between the cooking AND the cleaning I was wiped out. Honestly I was ready to pass out with sheer fatigue. But then the dinner was all cooked up and here I am exhausted but ready to enjoy and chow down a good Thanksgiving Dinner. I was FAMISHED..Everything smelled fantastic and couldn't wait to eat. Then my mother said ten words to me....
"Oh, I'm not hungry, I don't want anything to eat."
WHAT?????????
I just freaking knocked myself out not only with the cleaning routine that she could have done and helped out with, but I had also done a heavy duty all day cooking thing for Thanksgiving and she's not hungry???
I had been famished, dying to eat a nice meal, and those ten words to me just killed my appetite..now I wasn't hungry..honestly I felt like dumping the sweet potato pie right on top of her head.
So boys and girls...have you ever had a "delightful" (NOT) holiday..the kind that went wrong for some reason and put a real damper on what should have been a festive, happy time?
Here's your chance to rant about it..
I just freaking knocked myself out not only with the cleaning routine that she could have done and helped out with, but I had also done a heavy duty all day cooking thing for Thanksgiving and she's not hungry??? I had been famished, dying to eat a nice meal, and those ten words to me just killed my appetite..now I wasn't hungry..honestly I felt like dumping the sweet potato pie right on top of her head.
So boys and girls...have you ever had a "delightful" (NOT) holiday..the kind that went wrong for some reason and put a real damper on what should have been a festive, happy time?
Here's your chance to rant about it..6 people like this
12 responses
@metschica25 (5399)
• United States
28 Nov 08
Hello 
one year my mom just got outta the hospital with surgery a day before thanksgiving . well my dad didnt want any help with dinner . turkey was kinda raw , burnt gravy , soupy stuffing , and all of the oter sides had ashes in them . He was smoking and i guess they feel in . The pies were burnt too LOL. He just rused and would not let us help so we all went out for awhile . not only that but my gram complained all thru the dinner . Lol Things happen!
one year my mom just got outta the hospital with surgery a day before thanksgiving . well my dad didnt want any help with dinner . turkey was kinda raw , burnt gravy , soupy stuffing , and all of the oter sides had ashes in them . He was smoking and i guess they feel in . The pies were burnt too LOL. He just rused and would not let us help so we all went out for awhile . not only that but my gram complained all thru the dinner . Lol Things happen! 2 people like this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
1 Dec 08
This kind of reminds me of a story my mother told me about my grandmother. She was just newly married to her husband. Now it was her mother (my great-grandmother) who had been the cook of the family..while her daughter (my grandmother) had never really cooked before. But she insisted on cooking the whole Thanksgiving dinner to show off for her newly married husband (my grandfather)...so everything is cooked up and her husband was allowed to do the "honors" of carving the turkey which looked great and nicely browned...until he carved...it too was raw inside..what a way to try to impress one's husband ..no? NOT
Mmmmm..your father sounds like the way my mother was..she would have burned water if it were possible..
@reinydawn (11642)
• United States
30 Nov 08
The first thing that came to mind for me was a Thanksgiving that I wasn't at. I love to cook and it was my first year in my new house. I made this great dinner, and although I invited my family, they all went to my mother's. Well, they had wished that they had come to my house! Some of them actually did to get some "good" food. My mother is a horrible cook, we all know it and I try my hardest to make sure she isn't cooking for the major holidays. Well, her turkey was so dry that when my nephew got to my house to eat he was telling me that even dumping water on his plate didn't help! I was so glad that I didn't go to my mother's that year.
2 people like this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
1 Dec 08
LOL--oh my mother was a terrible cook too. If she could have figured out a way to burn water she would have. I sort of became the official cook some thirty years ago..after that never had a burnt meal ever again.
1 person likes this
@highflyingxangel (9225)
• United States
28 Nov 08
Any holiday meal at my house tends to be pure torture. My grandfather enjoys running his mouth and bringing up the faults of everyone around him. My mother enjoys egging him on and naturally, she is the target of most of the things that he likes to say. So, usually, whenever we have a meal, she never helps prepare any of it, she sits around all day, or sleeps most of the time or starts trouble for the sake of starting trouble.
He usually reserves all of his criticisms and what not until the dinner is prepared and we're all sitting around the table. He seems to think that he does everything around the house and what not when I do help him a lot more than he admits. So, whenever we're eating, he likes to bring up past faults and what not and just berate people while eating. He has a captive audience since we're eating and everything and then my mother starts trouble. Sometimes she just starts running her mouth for the sake of running her mouth and then that gets him started. It's a lose-lose situation.
2 people like this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
1 Dec 08
My it seems you have a nice peaceful holiday meal..NOT. Ah, family members..gotta love them no? Hey there would be no "excitement" in our lives if everyone got along, right?
@p1kef1sh (45681)
•
29 Nov 08
We don't have Thanksgiving here Pye but I do remember one Christmas where I served up the turkey and started to carve it when I was overcome by this awful sense of sickness and apologised and said that I would have to go and lie down. Which I did for two weeks! I had the flu. Proper flu, not man flu!
2 people like this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
1 Dec 08
Oh that's a shame...nothing is worse than getting sick during a major holiday especially when looking forward to it. I once had the flu bad too during Christmas way back when I was a kid..honestly, thought I was dying I was so sick
@tamarafireheart (15384)
•
28 Nov 08
Hi pye,
I can understand that, mine is my brothers and sister, many years ago, when I used to go to my mothers' for Christmas gathering and when we all sit at the dinner table, because I am small, there was never a place set for me and I have to stand and eat my dinner at the side board, well that was not all I was told told to baby sit for their children while they are eating. I lost my rag day and told them flat that I know the children are my nieces and nephews I am not their parents and why should I leave my dinner and look after them, I am not a nanny. There were such a commotions and I was called a lot of names and the air was blue, my poor mum just sat there dumbfounded, it was not her fault and in the end just for peace sake I sat with the children with my Christmas dinner on my lap in the front room and getting just to clean one of the children's sick of the carpet, I was not a happy bunny. It always happens to at Christmas or a family gathering just because I am small, I was the bullied one in my family and my poor huuby just kept out of it because he felt he was the outsider.
Bright Blessings.
Tamara
XXX
Tamara
2 people like this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
1 Dec 08
Mmmmm...after all the things I've heard from my friends about their siblings and how horrible they treated each other over the years and even now, sure makes me glad I'm an only child...LOL
@catdla1 (6005)
• United States
28 Nov 08
I admire your self control. I probably would have taken a piece of that sweet potatoe pie for myself, and dumped the rest on mom's head. At least it would have been easier to clean than the Cream of Potato soup...lol.
The week before Christmas my mother made a Sicilian Beef recipe that was excellent. It's a roast slowly cooked with tomatoes, onions and herbs to the point where it is so tender that is falls apart on your fork, and served over pasta. She used to make a huge pot-full of it. Unfortunately, it never occured to her to freeze any of the leftovers. The 1st day it was served, it was awesome, you couldn't hardly wait to eat. The 2nd day it was good. By the end of the week, when we were still trying to finish it, I would rather have had tripe and buttered parsnips (which are on the top of my never-to-eat list).
One year a movie was being filmed on our area. The newspaper make a big deal out of one restaurant where the stars frequently dined. It happened to be a small, family run Italian restaurant. My mother and grandmother were dying to try this restaurant out, so my grandfather surprised them both by making reservations for the whole family for Christmas. This was a big deal, since there were 20 of us at the time. Their excitement was hightened by a newspaper article about Michael Douglas eating there a day or two before when he was traveling through the area.
Christmas Day: We all book off to this restaurant. I feel like a big cheese (I was about 14 at the time), because the tables that we occupy filled up about a quarter of the restaurant. The menu is brought, and it is a limited holiday menu. Everything, except one dish had a butter sauce of some sort. I don't eat butter, or anything with it on it. So I ordered the one item that had none in it, had no clue what I was getting because it had a fancy Italian name and I was too embarassed to ask. The meal is brought, the cover was lifted from the plate.
It was identical to the Sicilian Beef that we'd already been eating for a week!
That was my worst holiday meal, I remember the gag reflex on the back of my tongue like it was yesterday...lol.
2 people like this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
1 Dec 08
Yes I guess I do have an amazing self-control..but you better believe I was fuming ...that same year at Christmas time I had to endure the same shat from my mother...knocked myself out cooking a Christmas dinner feast while my mother just sat on her duff..by the time New Year's Eve rolled round I had it up to here...I always like to fix special goodies to eat for watching the New Year's Ball drop at Times Square...was running late trying to get things done, plus a dinner. same thing my mother just sat...so I got so ticked off at her, I yelled at her, that I honest to God couldn't stand looking at her just sitting there like a zombie and not help out and told her to go to the bathroom and stay there..LOL. Ours is a studio apartment and no real bedroom, just an alcove with an archway...so the only place I could think of was to tell her off and tell her to sit in the bathroom, cause I told her if I had to look at her sitting there on the sofa for one more minute while I knocked myself out doing everything I was going to have a nervous breakdown or something. When I think of it now, it's almost funny. It was like me being a parent yelling at their kid to "go to your room" kind of thing.
@Lakota12 (42600)
• United States
29 Nov 08
One year we had drove most of teh night to get to my father in laws and when I got there every one went to bed and left me up to bast the turky and when it got done I set it aside with the other food and my hubby and I had to go somewheres else and when we got back nothing was left and I mean nothing they had ate it all up and not put a plate aside for us and they could have for there was PLENTY!
My thoughts were those kids were just piggish !
1 person likes this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
1 Dec 08
Yikes..how unthoughtful while you had been the one getting the turkey ready. That really does sound piggish of them
@eaforeman6 (8979)
• United States
1 Dec 08
Someone once cooked turkey loafs instead of real turkey ugh!Just dosent work for me at all. I was very polite that time as an invited guest but thats just awful on Thanksgiving day ;;;yuk. lol I am thankful for any food that we are blessed with but when you say prefer ....no turkey loafs for me ...@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
1 Dec 08
You mean a meatloaf made out of turkey? Blaugh...don't blame you.. I would be disappointed as well with that instead of a real turkey dinner
@scarlet_woman (23463)
• United States
29 Nov 08
my mom will never say that.she's ALWAYS hungry.
don't feel bad,they never help me either.
worst..let's see..
back when ma was cooking,she put the turkey on the table near 6 hungry cats and turned her back.needless to say,the cats had a nice dinner,and we went out to a restaurant with a 4 hour wait.
dad had no pity when the cats had the farts all night LOL
@scarlet_woman (23463)
• United States
1 Dec 08
basically,yes..
i was surprised dad was so "oh well" about it.
he really didn't get mad til we had to wait the 4 hours.
(it was more for grandma's sake.she liked the formal dinner)
1 person likes this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
1 Dec 08
Why does that suddenly remind me of that scene in A Christmas Story...you know the one??? Where no one is in the kitchen and the turkey is left on the table..in come the Bumpesses (the next door neighbors) dogs and grab at the turkey until there is nothing left...the mother, father and Ralph come rushing back in and view the "damage" and the father says, "We're going out to eat"..and they wind up at a Chinese Restaurant to Chinese Turkey (a duck)
1 person likes this
@marcialoyd (1173)
• United States
28 Nov 08
Last Thanksgiving no one wanted to cook so we had SANDWICHES. I was the only one that voted against it so my one measley little vote didn't count. How depressing. All my friends were talking about their nice juicy turkey while I talked about my bologni sandwich. I hated it. lol.
2 people like this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
29 Nov 08
Bologna sandwiches for Thanksgiving???? One time my mother and grandmother (whom I lived with back then) were away on vacation during Thanksgiving...they weren't in the mood for a real Thanksgiving type dinner so believe it or not..opted for hot dogs! Meanwhile, I'm home alone and fixed myself a true Thanksgiving feast with all the trimmings...LOL
@littleowl (7157)
•
29 Nov 08
That is such a shame Pye wish I had been there I definitly would of eaten it!!..Fortunatley no I never encountered that problem, the one time I did though was when with my ex, his ladyfirend was there I had cooked steaks mash peas etc. he looked at me and said 'what that!! and threw it back at me again,that made me feel so small so I then told him he could go eat at his ladyfriends in future as I wouldn't cook for him..how could he of thrown a steak back at me? when I had taken time out to marinate it etc..that was expensive too..but am so sorry for your thanksgiving dinner, that oo must of been a horrible experience and probably was delicious..bb littleowl
1 person likes this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
1 Dec 08
How ungrateful and a real rotten thing to do to you. Glad you told him off though that he could eat at his ladyfriend's from then on
@guybrush (4658)
• Australia
2 Dec 08
I really felt for you when I read this, Pye ... all that effort and energy, only to end up hurt and disappointed - and I'm not surprised you lost your appetite. A crying shame. A similar thing happened at a family gathering a couple of years back - I just wanted it all to go well, but a family member complained about the meat being tough and inedible, blah, blah, blah - and then stated he wanted to go home (before dessert was served). I thought it wouldn't have killed him to have just put up with it for a bit longer - it was someone else's celebration, not his - and like you, it was ruined for me. I couldn't taste anything and ended up feeling really upset. I hate entertaining anyway, and would never do it just for fun - that's for sure!
