beautiful apple pie, perfect crust with leaf cut out shapes. In my eagerness for the perfect look and execution, i forgot to add sugar to the made from scratch filling. great pictures, but i refused to let anyone eat it after I took one bite and realized my error but my family does not throw away perfectly good food and they came up with a remedy "MORE ICE CREAM and whipped topping"

My mom is hands-down the finest apple-pie baker I've ever encountered, and in years past had an ever-increasing production to get baked. One Thanksgiving eve she opened the oven to check the 4 pies baking and the rack buckled and tossed two of the hot pies upside down on her ankles. After she stopped swearing in frustration and pain, she looked up to see my 8 year old brother's utterly shocked face. "Mommy! I didn't know you knew those words!" He was so impressed.

Haha, smooshmallow we had the same lack of sugar episode with my mom's coveted butternut squash pie. My husband's family had never had it before and were skeptical, but we bragged on and on about it. Then we all take a bite and realize the mistake. It still had a nice savory flavor, but no where near the real deal.

One year, my dad (who is an excellent chef) prepared an elaborate Thanksgiving feast for our family & a few service men from the Army base who would've otherwise been alone for the holiday.

Without realizing there was something faulty with the oven - Dad pulled out the most beautifully browned turkey from the oven, and set it as the centerpiece. When he sliced into it, it was completely raw on the inside! He was SSOOOoooo angry - but we laughed and it was a memorable meal!

Our Thanksgiving about 3yrs ago was nothing but a comedy of errors. My mother didn't read the fine print on the turkey packaging & so we ended up with a limbless turkey. No legs or wings, just one BIG breast.
We bought two frozen pumpkins pies, but instead of putting them in the freezer, they got put in the fridge - and thawed. We had to pour the filling out of the box & back into the pie crust.
The attempt at homemade pecan pie did not go much better. We burned the pie. There was also an attempt at pecan pie tartlets that were so burned & hard they bounced off the tree we chucked them at. The squirrels wouldn't touch them either.
My sister was introducing her now husband to the family at the time too. He said it was one the more interesting Thanksgivings he's had. Overall though, we all ate well & were happy to be together.

Thanksgiving 2003: my boyfriend and I arrive Thursday night to help friends prep for a Friday dinner for 14. Within an hour, the friends we are helping have left for the ER, one of them suffering a severe asthma attack, leaving us to prep all the vegetables and stuffing and to bake five pies. The sweet potato pie is so perfect that it looks store-bought. The Swedish apple and cranberry pecan are perfect. We didn't have the full recipe for the chocolate pecan, so it more closely resembles a solid candy bar in pie shape than anything else. My boyfriend burns himself on the explosive pumpkin pie when he pulls it out of the oven. Somehow everyone survived, and we had everything in its place and the kitchen clean by the time the friends returned from the ER around 1230.

But was the turkey thawed? That was the question at work all day on Friday, as we worried about whether our friend needed to go back to the ER. She didn't, it thawed, and dinner was perfect.

Oh, and Thanksgiving 2006: different boyfriend, also making dinner for 14. My left arm is in a cast, so I make stuffing and mashed potatoes with one hand. My boyfriend, in the midst of prep, drops a VERY HEAVY cutting board on his big toe, breaking a toenail that doesn't really grow back for almost a year. Our out-of-town friends couldn't leave their dog at home, so the prep was punctuated by the dog chasing our cat (and vice versa). One of our guests broke up with her boyfriend right before dinner.

And then, after saying grace, my boyfriend choked on his first bite of food. I jumped up and tried to do the Heimlich maneuver - and then realized I had a cast on my arm and called someone else in, by which time he'd (grossly but thankfully) cleared his throat.

This isn't a Thanksgiving disaster story, it's a hachiya story. I had some very soft ones the other day, and I made a spice bread with them. And it's possibly the best spice bread I've ever made. The end.

Last year:

Thanksgiving in my 90-year-old grandma's subsidized apartment with only a galley kitchen. Because of the lack of space, my aunt said she would bring that frozen Thanksgiving dinner stuff you can order from the Honey Baked Ham Co. Auntie did not read the instructions, where it tells you to thaw everything out the night before. So she shows up with the compartmentalized Thanksgiving dinner, each solidly frozen in their own little tins.
My mom proceeds to bitch out my aunt, then my cousin mocks the situation (to which I responded with, "Anyone who complains can cook Thanksgiving next year!"), and my grandmother is tuttering and cluck-clucking away in her La-Z-Boy.
I opened the first wine bottle in sight, poured everyone a generous glass, and set to work with my mom. We tore open each tin and removed its contents, plated them, defrosted them in the tiny microwave (which--not exaggerating--took more than an hour to do), and proceeded to bake each item according to the directions.
How was the frozen dinner, you ask? It was actually very, very good. Everyone had a good laugh and a great time.

When I was 16, we lived in a house with what Mom called a "dumb oven." It was unreliable at best, so I wasn't too shocked when, a few hours into roasting a huge turkey, the oven suddenly stopped working!

There was simply no way to salvage the turkey without bacteria worries (the oven had gone from hot to completely cold before anyone noticed it wasn't working), so it had to be tossed.

We shrugged it off, took some other stuff out of the freezer, and fired up the barbecue instead. (What can I say...we're Californians!)

My disasters always seem to revolve around getting the neck out of the turkey cavity. One Thanksgiving I didn't discover the neck and bag of giblets until after the turkey had been cooked; luckily, I found them while the turkey was still in the kitchen so I could destroy the evidence.

Then there was the time when I went over a friend's house when we were teens and her mother (who was quite drunk already despite the fact that it was only about noon) was trying to pry the neck out of a completely frozen turkey with a pair of pliers.