Thanksgiving

Any time you get more than fifty percent of my family together, mayhem ensues.  It's strongly inadvisable to come near our home around any major holiday.  Thanksgiving in particular is pretty out of the ordinary.  For starters, we don't eat Thanksgiving dinner until about 8 pm.  IF we're ready.  There have been years where we ate at 10.  The first thing you need to know about Thanksgiving at my house is that it isn't about the dinner.  It's about the cooking.  The week before my mom makes a TWO PAGE list of all the dishes that will be prepared for Thanksgiving.  Then, she will assign EVERYONE an equal number of dishes to prepare.  This has been going on all my life.  I was in charge of pies starting when I was eight years old.  I'm not exaggerating.  It doesn't matter how well you know how to cook the dish, if that's what you are assigned that's what you will make.  When I moved out and OR Tire started cooking the pies we all regretted it.  (Just kidding, he's not that bad.)  One year Beadle was doing the pies and she accidently put one cup of salt instead of one cup of sugar AND one teaspoon of sugar instead of one teaspoon of salt in our pumpkin pie.  I teased her relentlessly about this.  I still don't know how you can be pouring ONE CUP of salt and not think twice about it.  It's probably more understandable if you know that she was 10 at the time. This method of divvying up dishes has resulted in some pretty interesting cooking. 
All right, so I will attempt to recreate my mother's master list of Thanksgiving dishes.  That's should be enlightening for everyone.  Turkey (obviously, but there's usually 3 or 4, one smoked and two traditional), chicken and noodles (this is delicious, but requires cooking two whole chickens), mashed potatoes, yams, potato salad, cranberry jello salad, homemade cranberry sauce, green salad, gravy, green beans, oyster stuffing, regular stuffing (because most of us don't like oyster stuffing), homemade rolls (no fewer than 6 dozen), cornbread, vegetable tray, relish tray, deviled eggs (???), egg foo yung (????), sliced apples with homemade caramel sauce, fruit salad, carrot pudding with nutmeg sauce (this is a baked pudding, "come again?" you say), pumpkin pie, old-fashioned cream pie, lemon meringue pie, apple pie, cherry pie, blueberry pie, chocolate cream pie, cheesecake, banana cream pie and mincemeat pie (yes, mincemeat pie).  I think the reason for all the pies boils down to our competitive nature, each of us thinks we can make a more delicious pie than everyone else.  There are usually two of each of the pies and every one is made from scratch.  Tired yet?  Let me explain.  My mom doesn't like cooking, so she loves leftovers, if she's plays her cards just right, she can get us to make her enough food that she can survive on Thanksgiving leftovers until Christmas.  That's my theory anyway. 
A brief side note on the preparation of oyster stuffing.  I have helped my mom make this as long as I can remember.  She always makes it with her own bread crumbs, because buying a dozen boxes of the premade stuff is just "too darn expensive".  So...two days before Thanksgiving she buys about six loaves of French bread from the bakery.   Then she spreads out newspaper across a ten square foot area of the dining room.  I break the bread into bites sized pieces.  I loved to do this because this was literally the only time I got to eat white bread as a kid.  It still tastes like cake to me.  I could easily eat an entire loaf right now.  It is allowed to harden for a few days.  Then, mom mixes it with canned oysters, and turkey broth, bakes it to a gelatinous solid, and voila! oyster stuffing.  I have never tasted the stuff because of the smell.  Which is lucky, turns out I'm allergic to shellfish.
This is all made more hectic by our constant attempts to keep the two human sized dogs from eating our dinner before we do.
So, what else do we do on Thanksgiving Day?  Well, we don't watch football.  My husband made the mistake of asking Pooker, on his first Thanksgiving with my family, if they could watch the game later.  As it happens Pooker was wearing a Dallas Cowboys sweatshirt, so it was a safe guess, and a good conversation opener for my introverted older brother.  Pooker's response was, "huh?"  J said, "the football game."  Pooker, "There's a football game today?" J, "Yes!  The Cowboys play every Thanksgiving.  You're wearing a Dallas Cowboys shirt!" Pooker, "This is a football team?  Huh.  Someone gave this to me.  We're playing Dungeons and Dragons downstairs if you want."  J did not want.  But gaming is pretty typical.  Also, there's usually a puzzle.  We play a lot of Risk, Trivial Pursuit (the best way to show off your know-it-all-ness), Settlers, Cranium, Balderdash and Scattergories.  We are super competitive.  It isn't Thanksgiving unless someone (usually Beadle) has stomped out of the room in anger.  It is also quite likely that they couldn't have watched the game because there isn't a working tv in the house.  The ones that are there are used for mostly for gaming and dvd's.  My parents won't get cable and, since the switch from analog to digital is a giant government conspiracy (more on these later) probably never will.