I had this idea for a story where Jason's girlfriend's parents want to meet Jason's family and it turns into a family sitcom for the team. Originally, I had them being invited to dinner and Princess going all out to impress, despite having minimal knowledge of cooking and almost no knowledge of how to throw a dinner party. How hard can it be, right? THEN I thought, hang on, it's Thanksgiving this weekend, and wouldn't it work better if it was a Thanksgiving dinner and the pressure was really on? Yeah, I'm cruel to my characters. Then I thought, hang on, I know practically nothing about how you throw a Thanksgiving dinner. I get that there's turkey, pumpkin pie and something called 'candied yams,' which quite frankly sounds like diabetes on a stick. So I thought, why don't I ask the American Gatchamaniacs about Thanksgiving? They'll know all about it and can probably tell me some funny stories into the bargain. So... what can you tell me about Thanksgiving dinner? Do you have any hilarious stories about turkeys defrosting (or failing to defrost) or misunderstandings over ingredients and menus? I think we can eschew the inevitable family arguments over what Their Madge Said About Our Sharon since the G-Force team don't really have an extended family as such, but I would really like to know more about how you celebrate and how the team might tackle the various obstacles to achieving a Happy Family Thanksgiving.

I can tell you that my mother once burned the turkey really badly, and yet my dad raved for years that the un-burned inside was the juiciest turkey he'd ever had. If you want a complete disaster you could go the deep fried turkey route. Search on "deep fried turkey disasters" ... things can go horribly wrong when putting a turkey in a huge drum full of oil. Some turkeys need to be defrosted and others don't. I think defrosting is most important if you plan to stuff the bird yourself. Someone with more cooking acumen can correct me on that. We tend to buy a frozen, pre-stuffed bird that goes right in the oven. I imagine trying to stuff a frozen turkey might be impossible. Not every family does candied yams. Some do sweet potato pie or green bean casserole or corn casserole or, well, there's as many variations are there are families. Mine tends to do "mandarin orange salad" which is not so much a salad as a sugar rush. It's equal parts canned mandarin oranges, canned small chopped pineapple, mini marshmallows, sour cream, and coconut. Leave it overnight and it's perfect. I used to make it to have with my hubby but he doesn't like it, and that's a lot of sugar for me to be eating just myself! I look forward to having it when I come home, though. Apple pies are very popular, or pies in general. My favorite is pecan! (Which, again, sugar rush.) Pumpkin pies as well are very traditional for US thanksgiving. Not everyone does turkey but it's definitely the default.

Deep fried turkey disasters? Hoo boy! How would you even... Well, clearly it's possible... Deep fried turkey... I just... You'd have to cut it up into small pieces, right? Or pre-cook it? Or... something? Deep fried... Okay, fine. There are a lot of things I do not understand about America. I'll add that to the list. (You are not alone - I don't understand Scotland's deep fried Mars Bars either and I definitely can't get my head around the idea of a deep fried Curly-Wurly.) Deep fried turkey... Moving right along! Thank you for sharing your Thanksgiving traditions, Chris. Do most people make their Thanksgiving dishes from scratch or can you buy them pre-packaged and/or frozen and/or reheatable? Also, is jello salad ever a thing at Thanksgiving? Because that's something I could milk for laughs in a big way. EDIT: I am beginning to realise that the concept of what constitutes a "salad" is very different between continents.

I don't know who came up with the idea of deep frying a turkey...I've heard it tastes great...but when I saw a a video of a guy using two meat hooks to lower a whole turkey (not pre-cooked...I don't know if he even thawed it) into a vat of boiling vegetable oil over an open flame...well, it scared the sheesh outta me even before some of the oil spilled over and hit the flame! Some of the "salads", I believe, were developed when the war between militant health food nuts and the ultra die hard junk food junkies first started to really heat up. The junk food junkies started putting healthy food in sugary preparations (like Jello) or creating unhealthy combinations (like taco salad). Then, the junk food junkies could turn to the health nuts (who are, at this time, turning twelve shades of purple with indignation) and say, "See? I'm eating healthy. It's a salad!" And I'm sure that someone somewhere in America will be serving Jello salad and Ambrosia (another name for the sugar coma in a bowl Chris described).

Originally posted by GrumpyGhostOwl Deep fried turkey disasters? Hoo boy! How would you even... Well, clearly it's possible... Deep fried turkey... I just... You'd have to cut it up into small pieces, right? Or pre-cook it? Or... something? Deep fried...

As EW mentions, no, you don't cut them up. You put the whole turkey into a barrel or vat of boiling oil. I've never been present for this happening and honestly I'd be keeping a good distance away if I was! Numerous house fires have been paused by this relatively new (as far as I know) trend. That's some of the first stuff that comes up if you do the web search.

Thank you for sharing your Thanksgiving traditions, Chris. Do most people make their Thanksgiving dishes from scratch or can you buy them pre-packaged and/or frozen and/or reheatable?

A lot of families pride themselves on making things from scratch or partly scratch. (My mom's corn casserole recipe involves a boxed corn muffin mix so it's partly scratch.) In many cases, different people are responsible for different dishes, though I think maybe that's for larger families. While I live in Canada now, they also have Thanksgiving, though without all of the pilgrim lore attached to it, and it being just the two of us with both of us having limited energy, we rarely do much from scratch. There's a lot of people with limited time, energy, and/or funds (or just not enough people to make the effort worth it) who'll buy pre-made stuff. Especially those who really don't want a whole turkey. Some families and individuals for various reasons prefer to go out. Lots of restaurants have turkey dinner specials. Other traditional stuff I forgot is mashed potatoes and gravy, and stuffing (I vaguely mentioned it but it's important at many tables). Consider that Thanksgiving is essentially a fall harvest festival (though US Thanksgiving was pushed back to late November for economic reasons, Canadian Thanksgiving is still in October.)

Also, is jello salad ever a thing at Thanksgiving? Because that's something I could milk for laughs in a big way. EDIT: I am beginning to realise that the concept of what constitutes a "salad" is very different between continents.

I'm sure there are families that still do jello salad. Though modern jello salads seem to be at least less disgusting than some of the pictures/recipes I've seen for ones in the 50s! I'm sure there's also something to EW's explanation of the salad thing. We also do have salad salads with greens and whatnot.

Thank you, Chris and EW. That's a help. I'd better get on with writing the story and looking up recipes now! It's already Thursday here so I'll wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving now and beat the rush.

One of my American friends mentioned a dish of sweet potato or pumpkin with marshmallows. Her family has served it up at thanks giving. Sounds sickly to me... gimme an Aussie creamy potato bake anyday.

Yes, that's the "candied yams" dish, the very thought of which makes my pancreas recoil in horror. I just watched some of those deep fried turkey disaster videos and I don't think I'll be trying this at home.

The thing that makes candied yams so sweet is the syrup -- canned yams come in a thick syrup that could cause a brick wall to go into a diabetic coma. My new aid makes her candied yams from scratch, so the sweetness comes from the marshmallows on top. GGO - thanks, and I hope you have a good night there!

Thanks everyone for your help. I've now got the story finished to draft stage and will be in need of a beta reader.

FYI yams and sweet potatoes, for those who aren't familiar, aren't exactly the same thing. They are both, however, delicious! (And oddly much better for you than white potatoes? Even as a diabetic.) Though when you start adding syrup and marshmallows and stuff ...

I think that what you call yams are what we call, "those other sweet potatoes."

Another question: would Keyop, a 12-year-old kid who has in many ways led a sheltered life of sorts, refer to - (a) cutlery; (b) utensils; (c) silverware; or (d) other (please specify)? "Eatin' irons" is not an option. To put the question in context, Keyop has been set to work by Princess cleaning the good silverware (actual silver silverware) for Thanksgiving dinner. He asks (quite reasonably) why they are using silver cutlery when it is impractical compared to stainless steel cutlery. The question reads just fine to me with the word cutlery in it, but then I wondered if the word cutlery was in common usage among 12-year-old boys living in America.

Silverware, or forks and stuff. Unless Princess or the Chief have tried to teach him some class. "Those other sweet potatoes" is what most people on this side of the pond think as well. I hadn't even noticed my DH picked up a yam for me instead of a sweet potato last time!

Way back in the late nineties when I worked at a US summer camp for a couple of summers I was surprised by the number of everyday "english" words the American kids didn't recognise. Cutlery was one of them. They always called it silverware - even to the extent of calling the utensils we used plastic silverware!

If your a Kiwi... sweet organge potatoes are called Kumara. My Kiwi friends pull faces at the word sweet potato. The orange variety are the ones I was referring too. To me Yams are seafood??? Have I had it wrong... sounds like seafood... Mmm...

Yams are definitely tubers and are terrestrial/subterranean in nature. Thanks again to everyone who responded on the subject of cutlery/silverware. "Plastic silverware," huh? Oh... kay. Off to edit some more.

I am actually shuddering at the sort of thing that could happen when you combine the concepts of deep fried turkey and G-Force. I'm absolutely certain that there would be many alarms involved and the scope for an Interplanetary Incident of some sort. As for Keyop - I imagine that he would refer to most green vegetation based food as "rabbit food" Somehow, I don't think that Thanksgiving would ever have the same connotations for the attendees of that meal ever again!

FWIW the best tradition of Thanksgiving is saying what you're thankful for. Particularly if you've given it some thought.

Originally posted by ChrisW FWIW the best tradition of Thanksgiving is saying what you're thankful for. Particularly if you've given it some thought.

Oddly enough, that was one of the threads that ran through the story even before I changed it to a Thanksgiving dinner.

Originally posted by Madilayn I am actually shuddering at the sort of thing that could happen when you combine the concepts of deep fried turkey and G-Force.

I suspect that may be another story for another time, probably one involving Mark and Jason. Princess would never countenance a deep-fried Thanksgiving turkey; Keyop's too young to be in charge of the cooking; Tiny is too sensible and my version of Chief Anderson would approach it like the infamous Engineers' Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe, assembling some kind of doomsday device in the back yard with which to cook said bird, possibly involving lasers. Ironically, this would probably work since he wouldn't be in an actual kitchen or using kitchen appliances. His culinary incompetence is almost entirely due to him not paying attention in the kitchen since he has the attention span of a kitten on speed when it comes to domestic matters. Mark and Jason, on the other hand... well, they're really good at blowing up enemy ships and bases. In fact, nearly all their expertise revolves around making things fall down and go, "Boom!" Couple that with a frozen turkey and a drum of hot oil and... I think we may have next year's Thankgiving fic covered.

Originally posted by GrumpyGhostOwl His culinary incompetence is almost entirely due to him not paying attention in the kitchen since he has the attention span of a kitten on speed when it comes to domestic matters.

Unless coffee is involved. Then he pays very close attention.

I think we may have next year's Thankgiving fic covered.

And possibly a new way to bring down a Spectran mecha...

Originally posted by Madilayn

I think we may have next year's Thankgiving fic covered.

And possibly a new way to bring down a Spectran mecha...

Hmm...a giant turkey with a destructive sonic gobble...I wonder how Zark would misname it...

Originally posted by ElectricWhite

Originally posted by Madilayn

I think we may have next year's Thankgiving fic covered.

And possibly a new way to bring down a Spectran mecha...

Hmm...a giant turkey with a destructive sonic gobble...I wonder how Zark would misname it...

A Chicken ship?

[unrecoverable text]

Originally posted by KT1972

Originally posted by ElectricWhite

Originally posted by Madilayn

I think we may have next year's Thankgiving fic covered.

And possibly a new way to bring down a Spectran mecha...

Hmm...a giant turkey with a destructive sonic gobble...I wonder how Zark would misname it...

A Chicken ship?

*snigger!*

Originally posted by Madilayn And possibly a new way to bring down a Spectran mecha...

A turkey mecha that they take down by somehow using boiling oil?

I was thinking maybe a carefully thought-out operation by the Intel Division whereby it is artfully insinuated that the deep-frying of the frozen turkey is some kind of arcane ritual and/or power source, leading to hilarity within Zoltar's R&D department. The real fun would be when the singed and traumatised scientists tried to explain to Zoltar that they'd been had.

Originally posted by GrumpyGhostOwl I was thinking maybe a carefully thought-out operation by the Intel Division whereby it is artfully insinuated that the deep-frying of the frozen turkey is some kind of arcane ritual and/or power source, leading to hilarity within Zoltar's R&D department. The real fun would be when the singed and traumatised scientists tried to explain to Zoltar that they'd been had.

I like that, too! You know, the Spectran turkey trot could generate a good number of stories!

LOL

Do I sense a Thanksgiving fic challenge in the air?

Spectra has a Home for Singed and Traumatised Scientists. They sit around bunsen burners (unlit and unconnected) and wonder how Anderson stays sane and does Galaxy Security need any more scientists. They don't know Anderson is not sane. (and there are those who would say that he never has been). A Thanksgiving Challenge sounds an excellent idea.

Okay, okay, I'll do it!