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the first Thanksgiving dinner I prepared I made two colossal mistakes: every dish was a recipe I had never made before & every recipe had some difficult prep or cooking techniques ~ it was handsdown the most streeful & exhausting cooking experience I've ever had ~ I got the meal on the table & then excused myself and took a long nap. Needless to say I learned a valued lesson ~ only one new recipe & only one dish with a difficult prep or cooking techniques per meal.

We have a big family and cook 3 turkeys to feed the crowd. One of them is cooked outdoors since we run out of oven space. The first time I fried a turkey on my own I couldn't seem to get the oil hot enough. After a while, I finally noticed the probe wasn't far enough in the oil. After a frantic attempt to now cool down the pot (setting it on bricks in the grass and hosing the outside with water - not too smart), it finally cooled down enough and when we finally checked the bird, it was perfect.

These days I now cook the bird on my Weber. It's way more predictable!

My story is; I was born on Thanksgiving. No one had dinner that fateful day!

My mom made really good gravy. I think I was in second grade. I was so excited about it, I got up in front of my class and told them about it. Not much of a story unless you know my mom and her cooking repertoire.

I was transporting a cooked turkey with the fixings to a friend's house. When I got there the gravy had spilled all over the trunk of my car. I had to clean the trunk and run home to see what kind of gravy I had in my freezer, couldn't serve turkey and fixin's without gravy. sharonaquilino(at)hotmail(dot)com

A couple of years ago, we decided to forgo the turkey and have a roast and Yorkshire pudding, with all the trimmings. My mom popped the pud in the oven and unexpectedly had to leave for a few minutes, putting my sister and me in charge of watching said pudding. Well, it was ready and my sister grabbed it out of the oven and the pudding took flight out of the pan and flew across the kitchen, landing broken on a (thankfully) clean floor mat. I just remember that time stopped and the look of utter shock on both of our faces. We pieced the pudding back into the pan before mom got back.....we were going to keep it secret until she finally commented that she didn't do a good job because of all the cracks. We fessed up and had a good laugh

A couple thanksgivings ago some friends of mine decided to make a turducken. I think they liked the idea of it more than they really wanted to eat one, and none of them were (or are) particularly avid or experienced cooks. Anyway, they approached it sortof casually in terms of avoiding cross contamination and deciding when it was finished cooking. Turns out, that much meat takes longer to cook than you might assume. End result: awful food poisoning.

I am making thanksgiving dinner for the first time for my family this year, and that story helps me to calm down about the whole thing. As long as I don't sicken everyone, I am doing better than my friends did. Hooray for the instant-read thermometer! And non-amalgamated poultry.

I was living in France last thanksgiving and it was probably the best thanksgiving I have ever had the pleasure of organizing and attending. We had all the fixings and we made pilgrim hats and indian headdresses and all of our European friends wore them and stuffed their faces!

One year, the turkey was so inedibly dry; we had to order pizza. As a kid, I was far happier with the pizza.

I remember most years growing up with the adults eating at the kitchen table and the kids eating at the "little table" - which was a tiny little tikes plastic table

A word of warning....if your oven goes out right before Thanksgiving, make sure that the fast food poultry chain that offers fully cooked, rotissarie turkeys will have it warm and ready to eat when you pick it up. We picked ours up eager to get it home and carved. We had our side dishes in serving bowls, warm and ready to eat only to realize our turkey was cooked, but cold! We had to cut it up and try to warm it in our toaster oven. Thank goodness we had our oven fixed shortly thereafter.

The first year I made Thanksgiving dinner for my family (taking over from my Southern grandma), I had everything down pat! Pies were baked, dressing was ready to go - I knew EVERYTHING! The thing I didn't know? Remove the bag of giblets before roasting the turkey! :) Thankfully, the turkey was still fine! Now every year - it's been at least 10 since then - my grandma asks if I remembered to take them out of the turkey!

The first thanksgiving my wife and I were married was also the first in our house. We had a bunch of people over and I decided to use the leftover turkey carcasses to make broth and have some turkey noodle soup. The house smelled great, and soup was pretty good too. It's been a few years, and we haven't been in a house big enough to host for a while, but I'll have to try again soon, definitely.