Thanksgiving Meal Tragedies

I'm ashamed to admit this. I realize that most people my age have become experts at preparing a Thanksgiving spread for their family, but the truth is, I've never had to prepare the entire meal, until last year. I'm an absolute master at some of the dishes. My sweet potato casserole is a must have! I've actually been told that if I don't arrive with my chocolate eclair cake, I won't be allowed through the door. Mr ShowMe can smoke a turkey that falls from the bone. Trust me, with Mr ShowMe's smoked turkey, you won't complain for one minute about left overs, you'll be sad when the last of it's gone. But then there was last year... My mother-in-law was too sick to have everyone over so we were on our own.

The one dish we had never prepared was the dressing. I can't tell you where it all went terribly wrong. I can only tell you that it was awful! And by awful, I mean it was not fit for consumption. That's not an exaggeration. The texture was horrible and the flavor was something like I'd never tasted before. I even tried smothering it in gravy and all that did was ruin the gravy!

Leap forward one year, and we find ourselves on our own again. Thankfully, Mom is better this year, but she and Dad are traveling to the west coast to spend Thanksgiving with their daughter and her family. I wanted to see about buying some dressing from a grocery store deli. You can get containers of it that just need to be reheated. I figure since we had the epic turkey dressing failure last year, we'd just concede defeat early this year and buy it from the experts, but Mr ShowMe isn't ready to give up so easy, he seems determined to conquer the dressing challenge.

So I'm off to find a recipe that includes at least the ingredients that I know were in my Grandmother's dressing. I don't have her recipe, but I know it included certain things. I'm going to find a recipe, and we're going to follow it to the letter! Wish me luck!

Have you had any Thanksgiving dinner tragedies? Surely we aren't the only ones!