Thanksgiving is one of the best Holidays of the year isn’t it? Talk about the best food ever!! Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, rolls, green bean casserole….the list goes on and on. I am drooling even thinking about it!
The nice folks from Butterball are offering 10 lucky Picky Palate readers a free Thanksgiving Turkey (in the form of a $15 Coupon). How fun is that? See bottom of post to enter.
If there are a few things I’ve learned over the years it has been the following things:
1. Test out the recipes you are preparing for Thanksgiving in ADVANCE! No need for any added stress if a recipe doesn’t turn out how you expected 🙂
2. Have family help bring food to dinner. The host absolutely should not have to prepare the entire meal him/herself.
3. Prepare what you can the night before to save yourself some time in the kitchen. I try to do all of my desserts the night before 🙂
4. Have a clean up party with your guests! Don’t be left with a gigantic mess all by your lonesome 🙂
5. Most importantly enjoy every moment!
Here are some of my favorite Picky Palate Thanksgiving Recipes tried and true! Hope y’all enjoy!
The Best Stuffing Ever! Sourdough Cornbread and Sausage Stuffing
Cheesy Bacon Green Bean Casserole Pot Pie
Cinnamon Roll Pumpkin Vanilla Sheet Cake
Remember that the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line lady is also available to answer your Thanksgiving meal questions, share ways to save or to gobble up any turkey-day cooking myths. Their number is 1-800-BUTTERBALL.
Here’s How To Enter to win one of 10 Free Turkeys:
1. Tell us in a comment…..“Have you had any Thanksgiving Disasters that you’ve turned into something fun?” Let’s hear those Turkey Day stories!
2. For extra entries, Follow Picky Palate on Twitter, RSS Feed and Like us on Facebook. Leave 3 separate comments for this.
3. Contest ends Friday November 11, 8am PST, Winners chosen by Random.org and will be notified by email. Coupons provided by Butterball.
Welcome to my online kitchen! Picky Palate is where you’ll find family friendly recipes along with the best Disney eats, tips and copycat recipes! 
As a Canadian reader I’m hoping we are eligible for this giveaway? Anyway my turkey disaster story was when I had my Mother-in-law coming for dinner as a GUEST. However, she then proceeded to take over my kitchen with my sister-in-law. At one point I became rather irate and tried to grab something off the stove but my MIL jumped in my way and instead I managed to burn my arm rather badly. At that point I had had enough and decided that if my MIL and SIL wanted to take over so badly then they could finish the meal! I went and sat down and had a stiff drink – to sooth my burn, of course. I still have a scar on my forearm from that day but I’ve learned to just not try to cook for my in-laws.
No big disasters but every year I am looking for a new way to do the turkey.
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I have never really cooked a big meal. the first time i did, i prepared everything the night before. what i didn’t take into account was i needed to added time to cook because everything was cold out of the fridge. well we all made our plates and microwaved them to heat them up. thank goodness it was all close family.
Thankfully, I haven’t had any real disasters. It does seem to take a lot longer to cook the turkey though than I usually plan for. That just means we usually are much later eating than expected, but oh well. Gobble Gobble!
My brother and I as teens decided we wanted to contribute a side dish to Thanksgiving. We decided on boxed mashed potatoes. Well, we mixed up the measurements and added waaay too much milk, making it like a potato soup. So we had turkey, dressing and potato soup that year!
I have never hosted Thanksgiving. It is something my mom always does. She one year tried to make homemade cranberry sauce and burned it, but we poured it over some snow and it make for some really pretty pictures!
One year my mom and I made 12 pumpkin pies for a big family Thanksgiving feast. After hours of work my little brother accidentally dropped a football in one! Luckily it was just one pie ruined, but we still haven’t let him live it down!
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No disasters that I can think of, but it seems like there were many dinners when I was growing up where halfway through dinner, my mom would realize she had forgotten to set out a certain dish she had made ahead. That was always fun.
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I’m happy to say that I haven’t had any disasters yet! Unless you count getting to the families on time:)
Slight accident while frying a turkey, did get a partial new deck out of it.
But have great respect now for hot oil and chilled turkey!!!!!
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The most common mistake that I did the first time I made a turkey was to leave the bag in the neck, didn’t find it until we were carving the turkey. Haven’t made that mistake again.
The 2nd worst incident was in our first house, first Thanksgiving to host and our sink clogged up before the guests arrived and we were unable to use the kitchen sink for anything. We were very creative in washing dishes in the tub until we could tear apart the sink to fix it.
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thankfully no disasters…instead i was proposed to one year on Thanksgiving 🙂
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Just got married a couple years ago …so we always go to mom’s! No diasters that I can remember!
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A couple of years ago our turkey we thought our turkey was done, so we carved it and it was still pink. Instead of putting back in the oven we stuck it in the microwave to cook!! We still laugh about our Microwaved turkey dinner.
No – nothing really bad has ever happened. My mom is a fantastic cook and taught me well….although my sister told me she is baking the stuffing in a pumpkin….that should be interesting…..and my nephew insists that I served a tofurkey one year…I totally have NEVER done that….it has now gained urban legend status
Well, since I drink soy milk I thought it would be ok to use it in the mashed potatoes last year, but I forgot that I had vanilla soymilk…..now its a running joke with the fam!
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My mother hosted all of her kids & their families last year. Since we were all staying from out of town she was so consumed with getting the guest rooms ready, baby proofing the house, etc. that she forgot to start the oven. We arrived in the mid-afternoon & someone mentioned within the hour that they didn’t smell the turkey! I felt so bad for her b/c she worked so hard to try & make everything perfect & forgot to start the oven. There was plenty of food/apps to hold everyone over & we had a LATE Thanksgiving dinner. These times are the best memories to look back on and laugh at. Happy Holidays to you all!
My first Thanksgiving in college was a disaster! I cooked a turkey for the first time and left everything in the turkey–the neck, gizzards, everything! It was disgusting to find it AFTER the poor turkey was baked!
My first turkey was one of the ones with the pop up timer. When I thought it should be done, I couldn’t find the pop up thingy. We pulled it out anyway and put it on a platter, what I had done was cook it upside down, with the breast in the juices. Turned out great – we had the most tender, juicy breasts ever!
I burned the top of the turkey, while broiling it in the last 4 minutes. 🙂 It was my first time making turkey. My hubby said it will make us remember it. 🙂
Seriously never had HUGE disasters. Burned a few things, but not total mess.
First Thanksgiving with the in-laws in town – I tried to make home made rolls – I put them in the warmest room in the house to rise and then forgot about them. They rose all right – all over my daughter’s dresser… Mom-in-law ran to Bashas and got some brown and serve rolls – not the best but it did the trick.
The first Thanksgiving I had at my house I put postato peels down the garbage disposal… didnt know that I wasnt supposed to due that. Well needless to say we had a sink full of water and potato peels that wouldnt drain and my turkey was so juicy that it overflowed the cooking pan and started smoking and then the fire alarms in the house went off and that is when guests started to arrive. Oh well we managed to laugh it off and have a great Thanksgiving anyways.