Turkey Gate (lighthearted)

[Groovee]

We call it Turkeygate in our family.

The year we turned up to my gran's and the first time ever that her neighbour had been home in the years they lived next door to each other!

We arrived and my Gran was rather pissed. She told my mum to start cooking but she'd done the turkey!

As my dad started to carve, the turkey was raw inside! My Gran had only cooked it until it looked cooked on the outside. Cue my mum and dad trying to cook the meal and the turkey! They got there eventually! With my Gran moaning at how long it was taking!

Then my Gran gave everyone a nip! She knocked my mum's over and was giving her what for and told her there was none left. Then came back with a new bottle and haughtily told my mum she was getting no more for wasting the first one.

My brother and I did the dishes and we're talking about what is going on! We didn't know about the turkey til the next day.

Years later when she died we found her diaries. The entry for that day was "family round for dinner! Felt it didn't go well"

My mum hosted from then on!

Oh dear! Sounds like a proper family Christmas though!

My great grandmother used to insist in bring along a trifle so soaked with sherry you could have ignited the fumes. She was a character and a half. In fact my grandmother would say "if I ever turn out like my mother, do us all a favour and shoot me" which sums it up nicely.

'Felt it didn't go well'

My Nana had problems with her memory in her later years.

She always made stuffing balls with sausage meat as part of our roast dinner.

We're sat eating them one year and my mum turns her nose up. Gets the packet out of the bin - meat was 2 weeks out of date. Cue the stuffing balls all being confiscated

As you say, my mum hosted after that.

felt it didn't go well

One Christmas when my mum was young, the family (her, her sister, mum and dad) had gone out on Christmas Eve to visit family.
My grandad got so drunk (rarely drinks but will have a 'few' to be festive obviously!), that they had to like him onto the back seat and mum and aunt squished into front.

When they arrived at home, they couldn't get him out, and I'm guessing now, grandma was furious, and they decided to leave him in the car parked in their garage which was attached to the house.

Come Christmas morning, they were all woken by the sound of him in complete bafflement at being left in the freezing car in the freezing garage.

Must have been 40 years ago now but it still makes me smile thinking of that story :)

Fire, my gran would only cook kilted sausages until the bacon was cooked too

Ninja I'm laughing at that

Thats great

I remember one year getting up to go to the loo in the early hours, having a wee and could smell cooked turkey, had a little laugh to myself and thinking I was obviously really looking forward to lunch!
Stumble back into bed and started drifting off, then I could hear the beeb beeb of a alarm, next thing I heard my Mum running down the hall and stairs shouting fuck fuck fuck.
She had managed to set the new timer wrong and had cooked the turkey

The first year my aunt had a 'proper house' (after years of living in staff flats and mobile homes) she insisted we all go to hers for Christmas lunch. She had the house, but hadn't really got far with furnishing it, so asked if my parents would bring their plastic garden chairs, but said she did have a table.

It turned out what she had was a wallpaper pasting table, which bowed so much in the middle once dinner was served that my Dad and uncle had to sit in the middle of the table propping it up on their knees while everyone gave their plates a half turn every now and then to stop all their gravy running towards the middle of the table

Gliblet
I love stories like that!
Reminds me of DH sitting on a side turned recycling box, when we just moved and someone extra popped round at dinner time (not Christmas day though).

The first year me and now dh were together, he came over to my parents for Christmas lunch. Was also the first Christmas after my maternal grandmother had died and my mum inherited her best China which we used on the day.
Mum had accidently given dh a cake plate from one of those tiered stand things and it had a hole in the middle. Poor dh had a puddle of gravy under his plate where it had leaked through and was too embarrassed to say anything.

Our 'turkey gate' was the year I left the giblets in the turkey. I did check, but only checked one opening. It wasn't until we were all at the table and dh started carving and his face turned horror stricken. The whole bird tasted of molten plastic. I didn't even want to risk feeding the dog.

It gets mentioned every time I cook a roast. Now we only buy crowns, or this year we are hosting and I am doing starters, trimmings for main and pudding, but MiL is bringing the turkey.

Haha brilliant.

It's funny now but at the time I was like, WTF?

The first Xmas DH and I lived together (1988) we decided we'd have a lovely romantic Xmas dinner all by ourselves, including lots of champagne.
The stuffing didn't look crispy enough so I put it under the grill where it promptly caught fire.
When I went to get the turkey out of the oven I had to exclaim 'This turkey has no breasts'. DH came and looked, we prodded and poked (eyes stinging from the remaining stuffing smoke) and we both had to agree 'this turkey has no breasts'.
So we had the burnt remains of the stuffing, the brown meat only from the turkey, drank even more champagne and fell asleep (read passed out) on the sofa.
Upon waking I went to prod and poke at the turkey out of curiosity and therein found two perfectly formed breasts. I had cooked the damn thing side down and we hadn't realised at all n our drunken stupor.
Now I lay off the champagne and order a turkey crown to be sure of breasts.

Haha Total

My Nanna once put brandy butter on her turkey - she thought it was bread sauce I think

Mum once found the Christmas parsnips in the back of the oven in March and we've not let her forget it

Total that sounds brilliant

One of my favourite Christmases was the one after I broke my knee. It was too icy to travel or for family to come to us, so we stocked up on party food and bubbly and spent the day alternating between watching films and stuffing ourselves with nibbles, and tottering over to the park to feed brazil nuts to the squirrels.