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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.

No good stories, but this is the first Thanksgiving my SO and I are spending together and away from family. While we didn't give in to the temptation to deep-fry a turkey Alton-style, here's hoping that any anecdotes that come out of tomorrow are more amusing than horrific.

My mother, my cousins and I were pitching in to help serve at my aunt's house, and my mom had ladled soup from a pot on the stove into the fancy china which we were bringing to the table. Fortunately my aunt noticed that what she was serving was actually a pot that got scorched on the bottom and was filled with soapy water to soak before anyone tasted it. We've been retelling this story, often with embellishments, for over 40 Thanksgivings!

My favorite Thanksgiving story happened every year when my mom was alive and young enough to make the big meal for all of us. She would cut the large marshmallows in half and place on top of the sweet potatoes. The she would put them under the broiler. Every time she would forget about them and burn the marshmallows. We always laughed. The second thing she always did was in the middle of eating, she would jump up from the table and say "I forgot the"... salad, peas, or something she had forgotten to put on the table. It wasn't Thanksgiving if these 2 things didn't happen. Good memories of mom.