Thanksgiving Survey

Preparing for Thanksgiving guests can be stressful and time consuming. Improve the quality of your Thanksgiving dinner by answering a few simple questions about your food and serving preferences. Based on your input, you will receive a helpful t-shirt as well as some tips to improve your preparation process.

1. How do you typically serve the Thanksgiving turkey?

1. Fried in a large vat to the internal temperature of 165°F (74°C). Feel free to verify the temperature by stabbing the turkey with the meat thermometer while it is hanging directly over
2. With crisp black skin on the outside with raw/frozen turkey carcass on the inside.
3. On a 19-inch Italian hand-painted turkey platter.
4. From a package that says Oscar Mayer.

2. What types of beverages will you provide?

1. A Pinot Noir with nuanced flavors and subtle earthy undertones. Don't forget the wine opener, it was really awkward last year when you opened that bottle with the umbrella.
2. Instant powered tea that is always too dark or too light because the instructions on the side of the jar are vague and hard to follow.
3. The beverage doesn’t matter so much as the fact that all the stemware matches.
4. Natural Light

3. What types of side dishes will you serve?

1. Probably something you can skewer and cook over open flame. Like green beans.
2. Holiday Jell-O Salad with cream cheese, seedless grapes, and cherry Jell-O. It is fine if you only have green Jell-O and you can substitute cottage cheese for cream cheese since it is about the same thing. However, you will realize at the last minute that you don’t have the right kind of pan to mold it all together, and the whole concoction ends up looking like alien vomit.
3. The fruit salad one of your houseguests agreed to bring over. Of course, you will have to immediately stop what you are doing in order to transfer the salad from their Tupperware container to a more appropriate 12.5" Diameter Lace Cut Crystal Serving Bowl, then quickly wash and hide the plastic container from view.
4. Pork Rinds.

4. What type of dessert will you be serving?

1. Caramel Apple Flambé or Pumpkin Crème Brûlée. It really doesn’t matter which, as long as you get to break out your new butane torch.
2. Cookies. Except you were out of baking powder, so you left it out. Apparently, the baking powder is a more crucial cookie ingredient than it seems. You call someone to stop by the grocery store to pick up a cake.
3. Dessert will be served on delicate china dessert plates with sterling silver tiny forks. You also plan to serve coffee in tiny cups on matching saucers with miniscule silver spoons for stirring. This ensures that everyone has twice as many plates and utensils as they actually need while simultaneously making them feel like huge cumbersome giants.
4. Twinkies with chocolate syrup.

5. What types of centerpieces will adorn your table?

1. Your last centerpiece unexpectedly caught on fire during dessert after you got carried away with the butane torch, so you try to avoid them.
2. You were going to get a cornucopia at Wal-Mart but you forgot.
3. Nothing says fall like a glorious harvest wheat centerpiece.
4. The carved pumpkin from Halloween with the sagging part strategically angled.

6. What kind of dinnerware will you be using?

1. Thick earthenware plates that are chip resistant and fire retardant. And skewers.
2. Thanksgiving dishes mixed with two or three from the Christmas dish set because you dropped a few of each last year and now nothing matches.
3. Delicate Autumn Themed China.
4. Paper plates left over from your kid’s birthday party.

All done? Great!
Now it is time to view your results and begin enjoying your imaginary t-shirts.


If your answers were mostly A, here is your shirt:

This is really a shirt to help everyone else and not so much you.

Please take care when constructing your Alton Brown Turkey Derrick. Failure to follow the instructions can result in fire or explosion, most likely leading to property damage, personal injury, and/or death. Oh… and check the settings on your butane torch. You had the flame up way too high last year.


If your answers were mostly B, you get this one:

Who needs a cornucopia anyway? Even the word is strange.

Thanksgiving isn't really your holiday. You should delegate this holiday to someone else and focus on traditions with fewer variables. St. Patrick’s day, for example, is holiday that is more your speed. You invite some friends to a bar, have some green beer, and you’re good to go. No one even expects you to decorate.


If your answers were mostly C, here you go:

You will probably want to BeDazzle this later.

You may be finding it difficult to refrain from putting up Christmas decorations until this lesser holiday has passed. I know Thanksgiving really doesn't have the glitz and glitter of Christmas, but you can still make it work. In her Thanksgiving issue of Over-Decorating, Martha Stewart has included  instructions for several time-consuming and overly large centerpiece creations for Fall. By the time you finish arranging your citrus fruit, nuts, branches and wheat sheaves, it will be time for you to put up that long awaited Christmas tree.


If your answers were mostly D, nice work, this one's yours:

Nothing says the holidays like gas fumes.

Relax, turn on some Robert Earl Keen songs, and enjoy chain smoking through this holiday season with your kinfolk. For holiday meal ideas, you can turn to Paula Dean. She has a great bread pudding recipe that uses day old Krispy Kreme donuts, plus she does things with butter that you’re going to love.



Thank you for taking my Thanksgiving Survey.

If you, like plumsauce10, happen to “live in a country that insists of celebrating things only when completely necessary,” and you are currently “sailing through to Christmas.” You have my eternal envy.

However… you don’t get a t-shirt. Sorry.