Party Fouls

From a food lover's perspective, the worst day of my life occurred on Thanksgiving Day 1999. I was on vacation from my freshman year of high school, and with nothing to do but wake up and watch TV, I was looking forward to the gluttonizing to come later in the week.

Having been raised in Mississippi on authentic Southern fare (read: lethal doses of butter), I was already quite plump. Thanksgiving had always been my favorite holiday because, all that Pilgrim stuff aside, it was mainly about eating great food. The anticipation of my mother's and my aunt's annual spread of rosemary-roasted turkey, giblet gravy, corn bread dressing, cashew-crusted sweet potato casserole, asparagus casserole, cranberry–pretzel salad, and biscuit bread pudding with bourbon–caramel sauce was almost more than I could bear.

Imagine my horror, then, when I woke up Thanksgiving Day with the worst headache of my life. In addition to the vise around my head, my body was shaking with cold, and my nose and ears were clogged with so much who-knows-what that I could barely hear or breathe. We'd planned to travel to my aunt's house that year, so when I didn't come downstairs in time to leave, my parents came to check on me. Noticing my extreme aversion to light, my parents left me alone in the bed for a while longer. It was only later, after I'd recovered, that they told me they'd debated in the hallway whether to get me up at all but ultimately decided that they shouldn't miss out on all the good food just because I was sick. How considerate.

I barely remember the journey to my aunt's house, because my senses couldn't recognize anything. However, I do remember waking up once we arrived and being led to my seat at a wooden chair, right in the middle of the long dinner table, facing an enormous flower centerpiece. All I could hear was muffled voices and the shrill yelp of my aunt's Jack Russell terrier. Every few minutes, the guests would turn their heads in unison toward me to make pitying faces.

Then my mother, the one who had dragged me from my bed so that I could be miserable in public, mocked my sad state again by setting a plate of food in front of me. I couldn't taste a morsel, and I could barely reach the utensils, since my arm ached as if someone had driven a nail into my elbow. Even my favorite dish, the sweet potato casserole, left me cold. The food on my plate and the water I was drinking seemed one and the same. I believe I almost cried, not from the physical pain but from the thought of forgoing such delicious food for another year.

When I finally regained my sense of taste, days later, all the leftovers were past their prime or had been devoured. The gastronomic gods of fate had played a hateful trick on me, but I vowed it would never happen again. Now, if anyone so much as sneezes in my general direction two weeks before Thanksgiving Day, I threaten to stuff them.

—Ben Mims


Planning a Thanksgiving feast presents an annual challenge for my little nuclear family of foodies. Each year, armed with fresh ideas from food magazines and an ever growing collection of cookbooks, we try adjusting the menu to accommodate our lengthening list of must-haves. Kumquats in this year's cranberry sauce? Pancetta with the brussels sprouts? What if we split all the recipes in half? Would we die without Dad's sweet potatoes? Could four people possibly have the strength to polish off cranberry bread, biscuits, pumpkin, and pecan pie between them? These are questions we never manage to answer, and in the end we do what we always do: stick to our evergreen short list without changing a thing.

Last year, however, I deemed one menu revision absolutely necessary. In a moment of bleeding-heart commitment to eating locally and sustainably, I persuaded my mother to order a free-range, heritage turkey. Owing to an overwhelming run on heritage birds at the local farm, though, she had to order it several months in advance, and the smallest one available weighed in at 19 pounds. Faced with such a behemoth, we rationalized: we have big appetites, and we were expecting eight people. "No problem," my mom said. "I love turkey sandwiches!"

Unfortunately, a week before our free-range bird was to make its grand appearance, our Thanksgiving guest list shrank dramatically: my brother decided to spend the holiday with his in-laws in Wisconsin, another friend canceled, and the other potential guests took a last-minute trip abroad. Suddenly my family's feast started looking obscene. How could three of us tackle a 20-pound turkey?

The day before Thanksgiving, my mother and I gasped when my dad hauled the too big bird into the kitchen. Would it even fit in our oven? It did, and on Thursday afternoon it emerged, perfectly bronzed and lacquered, ready for Norman Rockwell to paint its portrait. Unlike the bland, cottony turkeys of Thanksgivings past, it was richly flavored and juicy enough to stand proudly on the table next to the stuffing and gravy. Yes, we had an awful lot of turkey soup, pot pie, and hot turkey sandwiches; and in fact, now that I think of it, there might be a bit of meat still in the freezer that I should throw out before this Thanksgiving rolls around. We also had a memorably scrumptious meal, and our purchase supported a movement I still strongly support. That's something to be thankful about.

—Emily Halpern