What's your most memorable holiday feast disaster?

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Christmas, many years ago. My mother was (and still is) on a "traditional" Christmas kick: goose, crackers, candles on the trees, the whole works. She decided that she was going to make a figgy pudding. I'd never heard of figgy pudding in the real world - it was just a line from "We Wish You a Merry Christmas."

Figgy pudding is served flaming. After painstakingly finding ingredients and getting the entire thing ready, my mother triumphantly carried the pudding into the dining room for all to admire. It looked - brown. Following the directions in the recipe, my mother doused the thing in brandy, lit a match, and set the pudding on fire.

It burned for ten minutes. She had used too much of too high a proof. When the flames finally subsided, she served us each a slice of the resulting goo...

And we never had figgy pudding again. I suggest you give it a pass as well. It's foul.

-- Atara (atara@raex.com), September 28, 2000

Answers

Amazingly, I can't think of any holiday dinner disasters. My family is fairly traditional about this, too. We get together with a my dad's parents and siblings, and cook a feast. Christmas is the same, although in trying to please both dad's and mom's side of the family has resulted in three seperate Christmas parties, plus our own (mom, dad, brother) Christmas breakfast. A bit extreme.

While it doesn't involve cooking, I had a minor disaster last year in that I never made it to Thanksgiving. My car busted a tie rod thirty miles north of where I live (with maybe eighty to go). I knocked on the door of a house, and encountered a friendly old couple who called me a tow truck, and then even drove me home. Kindness hasn't totally left the world...

-- Jim (aureth@cornwuff.com), September 28, 2000.


Sallright Jim... you good kid :)

And I can't think of a thanksgiving disaster either, save that my thanksgiving in 1984 was, shall we say, cut very short? I was crossing the international date line in the wrong direction. At 1 am of thanksgiving day, I zipped across the boundary and boom, it was the next day. No parades. No turkey. No family. No friends visiting. No phone calls. Nothing.

To celebrate this very short holiday, when I landed I ordered a minute steak. When the world gets you down, laugh in its face I always say.

-- Allen Kitchen (allenk@blkbox.com), September 29, 2000.


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