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When I was in college my brother decided, simply because large turkeys were on sale at the grocery store, to have a huge thanksgiving food party. Luckily it was one of at least three large thanksgiving meals I had that year. About forty random people showed up bringing all sorts of side dishes while my brother produced a 19 pound turkey and his next door neighbor brought over a large ham.

Three years ago, I served sit-down dinner for 16 in my tiny studio apartment in Manhattan. We built a table, some people had to sit on my bed instead of chairs, and some had to climb over others to get a seat, but we had a blast!

I finally convinced my family to let me host Thanksgiving dinner last year. After nearly a month of constant menu planning and tweaking, I thought I had put together a killer meal, without realized my family much preferred the basics (turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy, cranberries and greenbean casserole) to my attempts to liven things up with sweet potato puffs, roasted sweet potato soup, and smoked salmon and cucumber appetizers. To top it all, I didn't know no one liked sparkling water. The meal overall was good, but I never lived down my overly precious touches (printed menus, etc.) and learned an important lesson - know your audience!

my mom always makes lemon meringue pie and one year it didn't set up properly. we called it soup and ate it anyways!

My grandfather would Always bite the inside of his cheek or his tongue at Thanksgiving. He would eat so fast, and then suddenly, a sharp intake of breath, and he's turn away from the table and swear under his breath. It happened so often that us kids would watch him out of the corner of our eyes the whole dinner, thinking, "wait for it...wait..for..it...". It really must have hurt but when we were little we just thought it was funny!

One year at my sister-in-law's house their golden retreiver put her front paws right in the the sweet potato casserole and commenced eating - and then we found that she had eaten all of the dinner rolls for 22 people!!! Her stomach bloated up so big I thought she was going to float away!

I don't know if this is my favorite story or not, but our first Thanksgiving together was in graduate school on 122nd st. in NYC. My husband's parents and sister came to dinner, and his father pronounced the bird "dry." (It probably was.) When they left, we realized there was no heat and no hot water, so we left all the dishes in the kitchen sink and on the table. In those days, NYC landlords were very unresponsive, and it was only three days later that we figured out that we could boil water on the gas stove to clean up the dishes! So we lived in cold and squalor for those first few days after our dry Turkey experience.

Going to Uncle Buddy's. He would let me tear the bread into pinky nail pieces for the stuffing. He would also offer me some crispy turkey skin while he was carving.

Well, my favorite part of Thanksgiving day is getting up early every year with my mother already in the kitchen. We get a laugh out of washing the turkey and giving him his butter massage. The noises that a turkey carcass can make while being rinsed in the sink is always hilarious...

Our Thanksgiving has always been pot luck, and for 35 years or so that was with 20-30 people. We did not have assigned foods, people just brought what they wanted, and one year all the desserts were pumpkin pie - 6 of them.

We go away for thanksgiving to a camp on an island in the middle of nowhere with no electricity (well, the last few years we had a small generator but that's really neither here nor there). Usually the turkey gets cooked ahead of time, but a few years back the parents decided that we would cook the turkey in the old wood fired oven at the camp. what they didn't know is that the thermostat on the oven didn't work, so it was a good deal hotter then it was supposed to cook at. My mom uses those plastic roaster bags, and it melted to the top of the turkey, which cooked in a record 2 hours (for a turkey that fed like 15 people). Surprisingly, after taking of the plastic coated skin, they turkey was still pretty tasty!

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.