I suspect there are more people than you’d think who dislike most or all traditional Thanksgiving food. My personal opinions are:
Turkey: Bland and uninteresting
Gravy: Incredibly suspect and not to be trusted
Cranberry Sauce: Just give up and be JELLO already
Mashed potatoes: Acceptable
Stuffing/Dressing: Good. Or, I guess I should say, the variation of it my family makes is good. The kind that comes from a box that Steven likes tastes like eating instant grits before cooking them.
Green bean casserole: Why would you want to adulterate perfectly good green beans?
Sweet potato casserole: Too sweet unless it is literally just marshmallows on top of a sweet potato. None of this brown sugar/melted butter nonsense.
And the thing is, I don’t think I’m the only one that thinks most Thanksgiving food is just kind of eh, at best. And still almost everyone eats the same thing every year, just because it’s “tradition”. Lame.
If you’ve ever heard me rant about weddings at all (and anyone who asks me anything like “Have you set a date yet?”, hears my entire speech of righteousness), you know that I hate doing things just for tradition’s sake. Somehow as a child I got the impression that once I became an adult, no one was going to tell me what to do ever again. Obviously, this is untrue, and I admit that I need to follow orders at work and school. But I’m not going to let society push me around if I don’t have to. Which is why I have always vowed that once I became master of my own Thanksgiving, things would change. The menu would be replaced with my six favorite foods, the things I was thankful for. That menu would look like this:
Spaghetti
Homemade bread
Chicken Noodle Casserole
Fried Rice
Broccoli and cheese
Chocolate mousse
And it would be the BEST Thanksgiving ever! For me. This year, I realized that this dream could become a REALITY. Even though I am not having Thanksgiving alone, I realized I could become master of my own Thanksgiving by being on the ball and forcing everyone to agree to make their one favorite food instead of the usual nonsense. And it worked! So far the menu looks like this:
Spaghetti (Me)
Chicken fingers (Steven)
Meatloaf (Thomas)
Some kind of pie (Mom Ladd)
Some kind of vegetable thing (Dad)
Don’t look now, Charlie Brown, but it’s going to be the best Thanksgiving ever, because I’m going to willingly eat every dish on the table!
What foods would you bring to Thanksgiving 2.0?
I really like the idea of reclaimed Thanksgiving. I am feeling a little bummed about not going home so I think I will be limiting myself to tradition. I would appreciate hearing your wedding tradition rant.
And that is cool, as long as you LIKE the traditional foods. I am not arbitrarily hating on turkey or big, fluffy, expensive church weddings if that is what people want. I’m more annoyed that it’s what people do because they feel like they have to. I’m pushed around enough at school and work; holidays should be about having fun and doing what you want.
Weddings, doubly so, because it’s like a holiday that’s just supposed to be about you. Unless you know that it is the thing that will make you happy, there’s no reason to spend a truly horrific amount of money on flowers, or little matching table centerpieces made out of overpriced doilies, or have bridesmaids, or wear white, or have a huge cake that tastes awful because it’s meant to look good. You can probably tell that I am annoyed by or at least indifferent to most aspects of traditional weddings because I don’t really see the point. Especially since half the time planning/buying/organizing all that stuff just causes a mountain of stress, and who needs more of that? On the day that’s just supposed to be about you!
I get that a lot of people feel like they kind of have to have that as a Rite of Passage type of thing, or because they’ve been “dreaming about this day” since they were six or whatever. But that doesn’t bother me, because when I was six I dreamed about living in a submarine and saving sea turtles from sharks with high tech underwater weaponry (true fact: I have pictorial evidence). So, after reading this Planning Your Wedding book that I got from the library, which kept repeating “It’s YOUR day!!” but then listing all this stuff I had to worry about that didn’t matter to me, I just decided to ignore everything I didn’t care about. Which includes: wearing a ludicrously expensive dress, walking down an aisle, flowers, “the wedding party”, forcing everyone to sit through a long sermon, old officiating man I don’t know, etc.
Basically, I was left with just having a fun party! With halloween costumes! So that’s what’s going down. The actual ceremony–if you can call it that–is going to be the smallest possible with just like, our parents and siblings, and Rachel agreed to officiate. I assume she will be repeating exactly what she said when she called steven to set up Screw Date. Maybe change a few of the words.
Some of my relatives were like “Won’t you regret later that you didn’t make a bigger deal out of it?” And, of course it’s a big deal, but it’s not a big deal because of pageantry, it’s a big deal because I’m get to marry someone I’m crazy in love with! So I’d rather concentrate on that and not flowers/centerpieces/making people buy ugly dresses. That is kind of the abbreviated version of the rant.
Besides, way better to save the money for the honeymoon, obv.
I believe your entire view is summed up by this website/blog:
offbeatbride.com
They even featured an entire week of halloween weddings costumes and all. Actually, they feature a lot of really really weird/cool/fun non-traditional weddings. I’m not even getting married, but I like looking at the blog posts because it’s just kind of fun and different and the lady dressed in the crazy goth outfit slicing her cake with an actual AXE is waaay more entertaining than learning about depression and bipolar in behavioral science.
Yeah, I like Offbeat Bride–well, some of them. And I think it’s cool that it encourages people to think out of the commercialized wedding box. Some of them still try way harder than I plan to.
Also, I agree on the honeymoon thing.
I told Gidon that if we ever get married (long ass time from now), I don’t want an expensive engagment ring/wedding because I want us to spend like a month traveling New Zealand. Memories and traveling are just more important to me than a massive rock. Or expensive flowers.
ahhh! WHy does it keep publishing before I’m done!! I blame malfunctioning computer! Why must you hate me?!?!
Anyways, yes, a cool big party will be had years and years from now, but it probably won’t be what I thought it would be when I was six. Your halloween shindig will be awesome.
Pladd,
I completely agree with your wedding sentiments. Months of “hope everything goes perfectly” angst is fun how, again?
I make stuffing every year. No one eats it but me. I make enough for a crowd, because my recipe call for it, and I’m too lazy to figure out one sixth of a batch. Plus, I get leftover stuffing. This year, Will decides to try stuffing, and much to my surprise, he likes it. Now what? Do I make a double batch?
This year I tried making Bourbon Glazed Carrots, and let me tell you, THEY ARE AWESOME. How could they not be, since they contain a whole stick of butter, a cup of brown sugar, and a cup of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey – half of which is used to deglaze the pan (the other half is used for deglazing the cook). Yummy.