"jmcquown" > wrote in message
...
> "Let Kroger Do it For You". Or so my mother thought one year. I believe
> it was around 1977. My mother kept seeing ads in the newspaper and on TV,
> "Let Kroger Do it For You", accompanied by a picture of a nicely roasted
> turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, etc. So she called Kroger
> and told them to reserve a dinner for us. She arranged to pick it up
> around 3PM on Thanksgiving day.
>
> My brother and I went with her to the store to pick it up. He came out
> carrying the box. As he was putting it in the trunk he said, "This box is
> awfully cold." We/she opened it up to find a 12 lb. frozen *uncooked*
> turkey, frozen dressing, frozen everything. (The ad was very misleading.)
> She expected a fully cooked dinner in a box, with maybe only some minor
> reheating necessary.
>
> My mother wasn't one to lose her temper often, but this time she did! She
> had my brother carry the box back into the store and demanded to speak to
> the manager. She was yelling about false advertising. LOL Yep, Mom
> could be feisty. She got her money back.
>
> But now we were stuck without a Thanksgiving dinner. Well hell, who says
> it has to be turkey? She promptly drove to another grocery store. We had
> NY strip steaks and baked potatoes for Thanksgiving dinner that year 
>
> Anyone got any funny holiday food memories to share?
When we moved to CA, I found a complete dinner that came to you frozen. It
was supposed to have a boneless turkey breast in it. I thought this was
great because I have an aversion to things with bones in it.
To my horror, I discovered that it was a HUGE whole turkey. I had to go out
and buy a foil roasting pan because my huge splatterware roasting pan just
wasn't big enough for it.
I did my best to get it in and out of the oven because the pan was so
flimsy, it was very clumsy to deal with. And because it took up the entire
oven, I had to wait until it was fully heated through before I could heat up
the side dishes of stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and
whatever the dessert was. No rolls came with.
The bird sat on the top of the stove making a HUGE mess. I had no idea how
much juice/fat it would give off. The mess got worse as my husband
attempted to carve it. I wasn't about to do it. Wouldn't know how to do
it. And apparently he didn't either. He pretty much massacred it and
stabbed some slits in the foil pan, sending greasy juice all over the top of
the stove, down the front of the stove and onto the floor below. I was in
tears because I couldn't clean it up fast enough.
All of the side dishes turned out to be disgusting. They were loaded with
all sorts of crap that I would never put in my food. Like soybean oil. It
was even in the gummy mashed potatoes. Nobody liked them. Nobody liked the
dessert either. It all went in the trash. And nobody wanted to deal with
the rest of the turkey. I did save some of the meat which I used the
following day to make a disgusting Rachel Ray recipe for pizza. Nobody
liked that either!
My husband just got mad at the big slippery, greasy turkey and told me to
throw it out. We were in military housing at the time and the kitchen was
upstairs. I had to stuff the whole mess in a garbage bag and hope I didn't
drip grease through the livingroom or on the stairs as I went.
After that fiasco, if I have to make the food at home... I buy a precooked
turkey breast or sliced turkey for my daughter and I, and enough legs to fit
in my large crockpot for my husband. Yeah, I know they have bones but I can
just sort of plop them in and forget about them. The side dishes and things
are easy enough to make.
Now that we are back in WA, we usually have Thanksgiving at their house.
They bought a complete meal from Boston Market when it was here and a cooked
one from the grocery store. We weren't pleased with either of them. We're
all really picky eaters though.