Man people are LAZY these days...
 

I just have to get something off my chest that's buggin' right now...
A co-worker of mine just told me that she went to Vons (a grocery store) this weekend to order her pre-cooked Thanksgiving dinner and they told her they weren't taking any more orders as they already have 400 orders for the dinner! :eek: This particular grocery store is in a relatively small community. The fact that 400 of these dinners were sold boggles my mind. I mean, I understand if you really don't have time, like if you have to work Thanksgiving morning or something, but otherwise I just don't get it. :distress: People want tradition these days, but it seems they don't want to do the little bit of work that makes it a tradition in the first place. Do you guys get me, or am I just being a bitch? :shrug:

~jamie

I get you. :)

I've been shocked by the number of ads for these pre-cooked meals myself. There's no way they can be like the homemade stuff. I made Thanksgiving dinner once and honestly I thought it was fun and it came out great. You just need a cookbook and a Butterball which comes with instructions. Plus I used to watch my parents and ask them lots of questions so I knew how to make stuff. It is all very simple too, boil, cut, mash, bake and slice! That's kind of it! And the secret to lump free gravy is to first mix the flour with some of the fat and then when it is smooth mix in the rest of the pan drippings. Mmmm, gravy!

We have had Christmas dinner catered for as long as I cam remember and we dine out for Thanksgiving.

Then again, my mother wanted at one time to build a house without a kitchen :eek:

The latter. What are you, from the year 1850? Get with modern times.

Not everyone HAS the time & energy (nor the HEALTH) to cook a big traditional T-Day dinner...and the supermarket pre-cooked dinner is just f-ing GREAT. What about those "moms" who HAVE cooked the "big traditional meal" for 20+ years and have just grown tired of the hassle (or can't DEAL with the hassle)? Even those grocery store dinners take a bit of additional preparation once you get 'em home, so its not exactly "slam dunk, here's your dinner, dig in".

Society in general is lazy these days. It's been an ongoing progression for years. :laugh:

I totally get if you don't have the time, or the health to do it. But if you do, what's the big deal? I just think a lot of kids that are growing up these days (I sound old) are missing out on some really nice traditions such as Thanksgiving dinner. What will they do when they grow up? To each his/her own I guess. Myself, maybe I just haven't done it enough yet to be sick of the "hassle" of it all.

I don't see anything wrong with it. It's just my dad and us kids this year, and we're not really into the whole cooking thing. So we're getting a turkey and 3 sides with it, and we will be making some stuff of our own to go along with it. It's going to make Thanksgiving more enjoyable for all of us, which is really the point, right? It's no fun if there's drama. :laugh:

So for T-day, let's shut down all the electric generator plants, turn off the piped in running water, shut down the natural gas pipelines and THEN let people cook their T-Day dinners. No running water, no piped in heat, no electricity. Sure, let's just all go back to the Mayflower, too. Get real.

I know. And it's quite sad.

I think you're confusing "ease" with "lazy".

I can only imagine the stress that you guys will have saved. If I actually ate meat, I'd buy a precooked turkey anyway because every turkey I've ever eaten on Thanksgiving has been overcooked to point where it could double as turkey jerky. :laugh: One year my grandmother made her first turkey and she got pissed because she couldn't get it to brown, so she melted butter, poured it over the turkey, and cranked it to broil. By the time she realized it was burning, it must have been burnt an inch thick.

Isn't part of the fun of celebrating Thanksgiving spending it with family and friends and all chiming in to cook a nice big dinner?

At least, that's what we do for Christmas around here. :shrug: I love that part, cooking is lots of fun when you do it with a few people (and a bottle of wine!).

I don't see the point of ordering a T-day dinner. You might as well get Chinese take-out or drive by McDonalds then.

As Bob Dylan said 40+ years ago...

..."the times they are a-changin'..."

How many people in the US are REALLY directly decended from those at "The First Thanksgiving"? Probably a small minority...so we're all just "play acting" a false tradition in the first place.

Now that's awesome. Ha ha ha. :blob2: One of these days, I'm going to get a turkey frier! Mmm, fried turkey. Whee!

Everybody makes their own traditions. :shrug: There are plenty of reasons that people can't or won't go all out cooking for Thanksgiving, I don't see how it's anyone's right to judge how people spend their holidays. If it's important to you to make your gigantic gorge-fest, then make sure that's a tradition in your family. I don't get what the big deal is.

eta:

My dad's been deep frying the turkey the last couple of years. It's disgustingly good.

We did it last year :shrug: My mother was working and it was too much for my dad to do by himself so we ordered it and then my dad made a few extra sides and added more flavor. It was a really good meal. Some people just don't have the time while perhaps others either are unable to cook (maybe because they don't cook well or because they're physically incapable) yet still want the traditional meal. I don't see anything wrong with it :shrug:

I always thought Thanksgiving was about the gathering and family and friends and not the food. The food was the bonus.

I think it's fine to have the dinner catered. Growing up in a divorced family, my Dad is not a cook by any degree of the imagination, but he would lavish my brother and I when he got us for the holiday (alternating years...but Mom got us more) he would take us out to dinner at somewhere really nice, like the Fairmont or Sheraton Palace in SF. It was decadent and actually surprisingly fun.

I mentioned in a earlier Thanksgiving thread, that I'm making tacos for my cuz and I and whoever else swings by my place. So again, it's about the family and friends, not the food.

Besides Christmas is another turkey day. Turkey is over rated anyway. In fact all the "traditional" thanksgiving food is pretty lame. I hate stuffing, sweet potatoes (especially with those marshmellows), cranberries, GRAVY (diarrhea). And being health conscious in the first place, I eat a lot of turkey (breast) year round.

We're having three turkey's this year and a ham at my aunt and uncles house. One is deep fried, one is roasted, and one is regular :laugh: Something for everyone.

have you heard of Tofurkey? I try to eat as little meat as possible, especially red meat. Love me some Boca burgers.

Tofurkey is so nasty. I love meat substitutes, I live on Boca & Gardenburgers, but tofurkey? Eww. One Thanksgiving when I was in college my parents came up and cooked for my roommates and I, and my Dad made a Tofurkey for my vegan roommate, shrimp & crawfish for my vegetarian roommate, and turkey for everyone else.

Oh, yum. My dad used to smoke our turkeys before he went nuts with the deep frying. THAT was the best.

You should have seen her trying to salvage the turkey by scraping off the burnt sections with a BUTTER KNIFE. The kitchen looked like a crematorium.

Ha! I've seen those at BJ's and they're absolutely huge. :laugh: Too funny.

This made me cackle with amusement. Your family must be enormous!!

Tofurkey offends my sense of taste. It's so putrid. I *love* Boca burgers, though.

My favorite fake meat product ever is Trader Joe's veggie meatballs, have you had them? I am so severely addicted to them.

(I am posting constantly today just so I can watch my banner. I'm shaaaameless.)

You are such a freak :p

Funny how some of you hate meat or don't eat it...but yet crave it nonetheless and for some reason buy fake meat to quench that real meat need. Weird.

I like meat well enough, I just don't like cooking it. Boca burgers are easy and quick to make, and are delicious. I crave the taste of them, not what they're supposed to be faking me out for. They also have more protein and fiber and other healthy junk etc. than meat has.

Fried turkey really is insanely good.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with ordering the meal. I'm fortunate enough to be able bodied and actually like to cook but for those who aren't and don't why not? I just love the tradition of having my Mom's stuffing, which was my grandmother's, plus the same smells and flavors at the table. It is just comforting. But whatever the traditions are is what's comforting. Or if you don't have traditions the wine or whatever you like is comforting. I guess whatever gets you through the frikkin day. I have so few actual traditions in my family though that this one I like to keep. I love the smell of that Bell's seasoning cooking in my stuffing. Mmmmm...

I'm partial to the Morningstar Corndogs, myself. My best friend is a vegetarian and her freezer is stock full of things. Her boyfriend and I mostly just mack on the corn dogs. :thumbsup:

ANYTHING from Trader Joe's is great...one of my favorite stores.

We're hooked on their pre-packaged frozen meals...especially the Shrimp & Veggie Stir Fry (from the frozen section). 11 minutes from freezer to table and tastes like it came from a restaurant.

Well, I don't know. Maybe some people are lazy :shrug: , but then again, some people just don't like the hassle or they just don't like to cook. Me, I really don't like to cook, but I'm into tradition & my mother always cooks a turkey with all the trimmings. So I started cooking a turkey with the trimmings for my husband & a few members of his family for Thanksgiving. And my husband, who knows I hate to cook, always helps me out, so it's really not too bad. And I always get a free turkey from work. I think of Thanksgiving as the "forgotten holiday". I hate that Christmas seems to start earlier & earlier every year, like the Halloween & Christmas decorations at right next to each other. I just feel kind of sorry for Thanksgiving, the forgotten holiday. :lol:

Lee :)

Oh god. Too funny. TOOOO funny.

Anyway, my mother-in-law had Thanksgiving dinner catered once- we had a lot of things going on in the family that year, and no one was up to the whole cooking thing but everyone wanted to eat a traditional dinner together. I know she paid a small fortune for it, but man it was so good. So, I can understand it. We probably won't do it again, but it was a real treat.

I've cooked an entire dinner a few times and it can be a lot of fun. The pre cooked dinners I have had were okay, but not great. The best thing about them was the fact that no one present had to cook them. There is nothing like fresh homemade food, if you know what the hell you are doing. Or fresh baked rolls and homemade pie. But, not everyone has the time, energy and ability.

Of course people are lazy. And getting lazier by the day.
We want it now, we want it cheap, we don't want to struggle for it, and we want it ALL. God Bless America.

I just want to be the first to say that the Pilgrim's Platter at Copeland's (a popular rest. in the South) are FAR better than anything I could ever cook and I have gone to several cooking schools - and its like $19.99. But, I have done the whole thing from chosing the bird to cracking the eggs for the pies. I do not mind doing it and if I had anyone to do it for I would - though that $19.99 Pilgrim's Platter will always look good to me :laugh:

Yep - and I am so guilty of it :eek:

I don't think there's nothing wrong with ordering the meal, but, I myself will never do it so long as I am able to do it myself. I agree with the tradition of family recipes passed down... the turkey thing I do is all my own, but I'm making my grandmothers cranberry jello, and my mom is making my grandmothers sweet potato casserole.... It really is comforting. I hope to pass the love of making the dinner and the traditions down to Sara, who will be taking part in helping mom in the kitchen this year.

Yes, the aggressive need for instant gratification.

We're doing 2 fried turkeys and someone's bringing a brisket. The bonus to frying turkeys is that (1) they cook faster and (2) your oven is free for all the other stuff.

Whenever I've done it at my house, my tradition is to drink mimosas all day while I'm cooking. And God forbid anyone should bring a can of whipped cream into my house. I will inhale the nitrous out of it before the appetizers have been served. LOL Good times...sounds like an Ab Fab episode, if they were American...

Seriously, to me, Thanksgiving isn't all about the meal - whether it's a Swanson turkey dinner, or you pick it up at Boston Market, or you're chowing down at the Salvation Army, or you go to a buffet at the Four Seasons. It's really about being thankful for our blessings. :nod:

I am coming over with five :wavey: :wavey: :wavey: :D

Just bring whip-its!!

Hee-hee! I'm going to a friend's house! It will be a fun group. I'm making my sweet potato casserole and parmesan herb bread. I just went shopping after work to pick up the ingredients I needed - the store was a nightmare. I went thru the self check-out with more than 10 items just to get the f*ck out of there asap!