Start a new Tradition with Deanie’s Holiday Take-Home Menu
One of our favorite Thanksgiving traditions was watching “The Accidental Tourist,” a movie about a family of socially awkward, quirky siblings living together well into middle age that features a quietly hilarious and torturous Thanksgiving Dinner. The sister, Rose, grossly undercooks a Thanksgiving turkey as the family suffers an agonizingly long wait for it to finish baking in an oven heated to 150 degrees. When the pallid bird is finally placed on the table, her brothers opt instead to double-up on the sides, while only her suitor, Julian, bravely forges into the pink poultry. It’s a small triumph. “He ate my turkey,” she exclaims.
We’ve all been there. The build up to the huge family gathering at a table teeming with delicious holiday dishes—a masterfully carved turkey, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, gravy, vegetable casseroles, freshly baked rolls, two pies for dessert—where wine and conversation flow jovially.
But sometimes, instead, the reality is a holiday disaster. The too-dry turkey that halts all conversation as your guests’ tongues are stuck to the roofs of their mouths, the runny gravy, the bland dressing, the burnt rolls. Or that time the embers of the fireplace started a fire in the basement and your family time was spent huddled in coats drinking wine on the front lawn while the firemen went in to put it out.
During childhood, no Thanksgiving Dinner was complete before my grandmother’s crying ensued after realizing—once again—we’d already started dessert before she had remembered to put out the cranberries that she had left on the window sill to cool.
Nothing brings family together like the retelling of the holiday cooking disasters.
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Why not start a new tradition? Deanie’s Holiday Take-Home Menu (available for pick-up only) has all the fixings—from prepared meats to side dishes to appetizers and dessert—available for your Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. (Fried turkeys are available throughout the season.)
Make sure to have your Holiday Cooking hotline numbers handy this season! Share your holiday cooking disasters in the comments below.