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When I was about five years old, my aunt defied my mother and allowed me to make, under her supervision, the "first course" for our Thanksgiving dinner: celery stuffed with cream cheese.

I felt so grown up and proud. Thanks, Aunt Jean!

One year my cat ate part of the bag with the turkey's organs inside it. Yes, the cat threw it up. Yes, it was disgusting.

Thanksgiving in Italy. Took some doing to to find a Turkey. Not to mention canned pumpkin.

a favorite Thanksgiving memory was the year my Dads boss gave us a goose as a thank you for hunting on our farm well we had never had one so Mom cooked it thing was a greasy lt slid off the platter onto my Aunts lap what a mess was the last goose we ever had

I only tried to host a Thanksgiving dinner by myself one time and it did not go well. Half my guests cancelled at the last minute for one reason or another, as I was slaving away in the kitchen, my roommate's cat (who was a huge fan of my cooking) tried several times to climb up my leg, drawing blood and leaving puncture wounds, and somehow a mouse found its way into a cabinet I'd left open while I was cooking/cleaning/tending to my bleeding leg. Not knowing there was a mouse in there, I closed the cabinet door and we ended up spending the entire dinner wondering what that little scratching sound coming from above the refrigerator was. I think it'll be a while before I attempt that again!

We all remember one year at my sister's house for Thanksgiving dinner. She was carrying the turkey out on a platter, some of the grease slopped on to the floor, she slipped on it and she and the turkey went flying. Not really funny, cause we were worried about her. But she was fine and we carried on with dinner.

My brothers and I decided to deep-fry a turkey about 4 years ago. By 'we' I mean I deep fried a turkey and they got faced on whiskey sour slush. Turns out liquor turns my little brother (my non-cooking little brother) into some kind of a fry-cook savant. After the turkey came out he proceeded to make fries, onion rings, and a failed attempt at fried pickles (pancake batter!). It was a fairly memorable scene to see fries garnishing the turkey.

Years ago I wanted to impress a new beau by making a Thanksgiving turkey for him. When he asked me if I knew how to do this, I pretended to be slightly enraged and assured him I knew how. I washed the bird and put it in the oven for the right amount of time. It browned very well but when he went to carve the turkey he pulled out a bag full of who knows what out of the carcass of the bird. I had forgotten to take out the bag with the gizzards and neck and all that stuff. Pretty embarassing.

Well . . . there was the time in high school when I went over to a friend's house on Thanksgiving and we found her mother in the kitchen drunk and trying to pry the neck out of the frozen turkey with a pair of pliers . . . .

But my favorite memory is last Thanksgiving, my first with my honey. He had a stroke about a month before the holiday (at age 40!), but was well on his way to a full recovery by Thanksgiving. We had (and have) so much to be thankful for.

First roast cooked and did not realize that cooking time on the package was per pound. Needless to say, there was quite a wait to eat.

Two years ago, I was absolutely run down from work and NaNoWriMo to the point where I couldn't even remember the date. This turned out to be a huge problem because before I knew it the night before Thanksgiving had come along and I wasn't ready! There was still work to be done: preparing the defrosted turkey, making the desserts, chopping up the ingredients for the side dishes... I tirelessly chopped and mixed and baked until the wee hours of Thursday morning.

My mother, woken up by the smells of pumpkin pie, asked if I was doing a rehearsal dinner. No, I said. This is all for tonight. She looked at me strangely. But Thanksgiving is next Thursday, she said at last. And you're going to be late for work.

Moral of the story: always check the calendar, especially when you're sleep deprived! It sounds like a horrible memory, but you can bet that when Thanksgiving actually came round, I was 100% ready. Plus not only did I get in the practice, I got feedback from the amused family members too :D

My favorite incident was terrible at the time but so funny years later so it has become my favorite memory. When I was younger, I loved the canned cranberry sauce. The family would pretty much put it on the table just for me and I would eat it all. Well my aunt was a terrible cook so I don't know exactly what kind of creation this was but it was made from beets and looked pretty close to the canned cranberry sauce. I dug in gleefully only to spit it all out on my plate. I now like beets but sure didn't when I was eight. I was scared to eat the canned cran at her house for years after that.

My favorite Thanksgiving was in college, when I went with my roommate to her aunt and uncle's house. The two best parts - 1. I had homemade cranberry sauce for the first time, and have made it every year since, and 2. her cousins had invented the "full rug" - whenever we were too full to eat another bite, we would lie on a rug in front of the fireplace until we had room again.