We should have stuck to turkey, but no, my mother-in-law and I had delusions of grandeur. We were going to cook up a Thanksgiving feast that no one in the family would ever forget. We succeeded beyond our expectations, but not in the way we envisioned.

At the time, Macho Guy and I were still young marrieds living down South. His family drove down to spend Thanksgiving with the two of us, and they brought along a small cooler filled with pheasant breasts. The guys are all hunters and they bagged their limit. They proudly laid their bounty before us.

Early Thanksgiving morning, I got the turkey out of the refrigerator and discovered it had hardly thawed. I hadn’t taken it out of the freezer soon enough. I panicked. We would not have turkey for Thanksgiving. No drumsticks. No wishbone. No stuffing. I was a dead woman.

Luckily for me, my mother-in-law came up with a positively brilliant idea. Let’s use the pheasant breasts instead. Hey, it sure sounded brilliant to me. The pheasant breasts weren’t frozen. Done deal!

My mother-in-law said that at home she usually just dredged the pheasant breasts in flour and fried them. That didn’t sound very Thanksgivingish to either of us, so we cracked open one of my cookbooks [Betty Crocker’s New Dinner for Two Cookbook that I bought as a newlywed] to find something more festive.

On page 39, we found Pheasant en Crème. Oh, yes. So sophisticated. So chic. So ‘veddy’ upper class. The sides that went with it looked easy enough to prepare too. We looked at each other and grinned. We two adventurous chefs were about to impress the socks off our family.

We checked the list of ingredients. The recipe called for a whole pheasant. We figured we had enough pheasant breasts to make a whole bird. Check. I had salt, onion, and garlic cloves. Check, check, check. Uh-Oh. My pantry failed to yield Cream of Chicken Soup, apple cider, Worcestershire sauce, and mushrooms. The stores were closed. Hmmm. What to do? Substitution, of course. That was definitely the way to go.

Let’s see. I did have Cream of Mushroom soup, so we could substitute that for the Cream of Chicken Soup and the mushrooms—took care of two ingredients with one can. I didn’t have apple cider, but I had apple cider vinegar. Close enough. Now Worcestershire sauce, well that one was a toughie. Wait a minute. I had a huge bottle of Soy Sauce. Doesn’t that taste a lot like Worcestershire sauce? Sure it does. What the heck, it would have to do.

We both agreed we had everything covered. But, to ease the niggling doubts lurking in the backs of our minds, we got out the plain old unsophisticated ham that I planned to serve for dinner on Friday and stuck it in the oven along with our bastardized Pheasant en Crème dish.

We set an extravagant table. We used the good matching glasses. No cartoon character jelly jar glasses for us. We used the matching stainless flatware and good everyday dinnerware instead of Macho Guy’s mismatched, scratched and faded Melmac dishes from his college days. We even used cloth napkins instead of paper, and we left the centerpiece on the dining room table even though we couldn’t see each other over the humongous arrangement. Yes, we went all out.

At dinnertime, we proudly carried our culinary masterpiece to the table to smiles and applause. We said grace, and I silently added a prayer that none of us would die of food poisoning if the Pheasant en Crème turned out not to be as festive as my mother-in-law and I hoped. We began serving, passing the plates around, and then everyone prepared to begin their gourmet dining experience.

I think I was the first to take a bite. I put that first forkful in my mouth and my taste buds immediately begged for mercy. I actually believe I heard them scream at me.

Spit it out, spit it out, spit it out! Now, now, now! Don’t swallow, don’t swallow, whatever the hell you do, don’t swallow!!!

Oh. My. God. This must be what poison tastes like. I peeked around the humongous centerpiece to see my mother-in-law’s expression of horror as she began turning green. She did what my taste buds were urging me to do. She grabbed her napkin and spit the noxious concoction into it. I did likewise. At almost the exact moment, we both shouted at everyone, “Don’t eat it! Don’t eat it! It’s awful!”

We were much too kind to ourselves. Awful did not begin to cover the ground. Gosh-awful did not begin to cover the ground. Freaking Gosh-awful did not begin to cover the ground. There were no awful words in the dictionary that were awful enough to describe how awful our awful Frankensteined Pheasant en Crud dish tasted.

I snatched up the serving platter at once. My mother-in-law desperately started snatching dinner plates away from everyone and slapping their forks out of their hands, but not before Macho Guy and his dad decided to see what the shouting was about. They were fool enough to swallow chunks of the toxic bird and both gagged. They reached for their water glasses and drained them. My father-in-law then rubbed salt into the already gaping wound. He said, “What a waste of good pheasant.”

Humiliated beyond belief, my mother-in-law and I retreated to the kitchen in abject failure. We dumped the contents of the platter and the plates down the garbage disposal where that slop found kindred spirits.

Thankfully, we had the good old solid dependable ham. We brought it out to everyone’s vast relief, and Macho Guy sliced it and served it. Everyone tasted it. Everyone chewed it. Everyone swallowed it. No one spit it out. At last, my mother-in-law and I had something to be thankful for.

Macho Guy’s older sister and her husband had been delayed and arrived when the rest of us had just about finished eating. The others regaled them with a grossly exaggerated tale of the lethal culinary disaster my mother-in-law and I had prepared, claiming we tried to poison everyone so we could collect their life insurance benefits. Ha-Ha. Very funny.

Well, this particular brother-in-law of Macho’s was widely known for his cast iron stomach. He asked if we had any of the pheasant left. We did. There was quite a lot left in the baking pan that we hadn’t yet consigned to the garbage disposal. He said he’d like to try it. Everyone did his best to dissuade him, but he was insistent.

I brought out the baking pan containing the remains of the infamous Pheasant en Crap. Macho’s brother-in-law encouraged me to pile a huge portion on his plate, and then he dug in with gusto. The rest of us waited for the inevitable gagging and probable puking. Instead, he pronounced it delicious and asked for seconds. And thirds. We all watched dumbstruck as he chowed down. Not only did he have a cast iron stomach, he also had cast iron taste buds.

My mother-in-law and I never lived down that we prepared the most absolutely terrible, horrible, inedible, worst thanksgiving dinner ever. We heard about it every Thanksgiving thereafter, ad infinitum. We were not alone in our infamy, however. Macho’s brother-in-law never lived down that he ate that incredibly inedible bird without gagging or puking, that he enjoyed it so much that he asked for seconds and thirds, and then he lived to tell about it. Thus memorable family legends are born.

I wish you all a Thanksgiving that is happy and nothing like the disaster I just described.

At the time, Macho Guy and I were still young marrieds living down South. His family drove down to spend Thanksgiving with the two of us, and they brought along a small cooler filled with pheasant breasts. The guys are all hunters and they bagged their limit. They proudly laid their bounty before us.

Early Thanksgiving morning, I got the turkey out of the refrigerator and discovered it had hardly thawed. I hadn’t taken it out of the freezer soon enough. I panicked. We would not have turkey for Thanksgiving. No drumsticks. No wishbone. No stuffing. I was a dead woman.

Luckily for me, my mother-in-law came up with a positively brilliant idea. Let’s use the pheasant breasts instead. Hey, it sure sounded brilliant to me. The pheasant breasts weren’t frozen. Done deal!

My mother-in-law said that at home she usually just dredged the pheasant breasts in flour and fried them. That didn’t sound very Thanksgivingish to either of us, so we cracked open one of my cookbooks [Betty Crocker’s New Dinner for Two Cookbook that I bought as a newlywed] to find something more festive.

On page 39, we found Pheasant en Crème. Oh, yes. So sophisticated. So chic. So ‘veddy’ upper class. The sides that went with it looked easy enough to prepare too. We looked at each other and grinned. We two adventurous chefs were about to impress the socks off our family.

We checked the list of ingredients. The recipe called for a whole pheasant. We figured we had enough pheasant breasts to make a whole bird. Check. I had salt, onion, and garlic cloves. Check, check, check. Uh-Oh. My pantry failed to yield Cream of Chicken Soup, apple cider, Worcestershire sauce, and mushrooms. The stores were closed. Hmmm. What to do? Substitution, of course. That was definitely the way to go.

Let’s see. I did have Cream of Mushroom soup, so we could substitute that for the Cream of Chicken Soup and the mushrooms—took care of two ingredients with one can. I didn’t have apple cider, but I had apple cider vinegar. Close enough. Now Worcestershire sauce, well that one was a toughie. Wait a minute. I had a huge bottle of Soy Sauce. Doesn’t that taste a lot like Worcestershire sauce? Sure it does. What the heck, it would have to do.

We both agreed we had everything covered. But, to ease the niggling doubts lurking in the backs of our minds, we got out the plain old unsophisticated ham that I planned to serve for dinner on Friday and stuck it in the oven along with our bastardized Pheasant en Crème dish.

We set an extravagant table. We used the good matching glasses. No cartoon character jelly jar glasses for us. We used the matching stainless flatware and good everyday dinnerware instead of Macho Guy’s mismatched, scratched and faded Melmac dishes from his college days. We even used cloth napkins instead of paper, and we left the centerpiece on the dining room table even though we couldn’t see each other over the humongous arrangement. Yes, we went all out.

At dinnertime, we proudly carried our culinary masterpiece to the table to smiles and applause. We said grace, and I silently added a prayer that none of us would die of food poisoning if the Pheasant en Crème turned out not to be as festive as my mother-in-law and I hoped. We began serving, passing the plates around, and then everyone prepared to begin their gourmet dining experience.

I think I was the first to take a bite. I put that first forkful in my mouth and my taste buds immediately begged for mercy. I actually believe I heard them scream at me.

Spit it out, spit it out, spit it out! Now, now, now! Don’t swallow, don’t swallow, whatever the hell you do, don’t swallow!!!

Oh. My. God. This must be what poison tastes like. I peeked around the humongous centerpiece to see my mother-in-law’s expression of horror as she began turning green. She did what my taste buds were urging me to do. She grabbed her napkin and spit the noxious concoction into it. I did likewise. At almost the exact moment, we both shouted at everyone, “Don’t eat it! Don’t eat it! It’s awful!”

We were much too kind to ourselves. Awful did not begin to cover the ground. Gosh-awful did not begin to cover the ground. Freaking Gosh-awful did not begin to cover the ground. There were no awful words in the dictionary that were awful enough to describe how awful our awful Frankensteined Pheasant en Crud dish tasted.

I snatched up the serving platter at once. My mother-in-law desperately started snatching dinner plates away from everyone and slapping their forks out of their hands, but not before Macho Guy and his dad decided to see what the shouting was about. They were fool enough to swallow chunks of the toxic bird and both gagged. They reached for their water glasses and drained them. My father-in-law then rubbed salt into the already gaping wound. He said, “What a waste of good pheasant.”

Humiliated beyond belief, my mother-in-law and I retreated to the kitchen in abject failure. We dumped the contents of the platter and the plates down the garbage disposal where that slop found kindred spirits.

Thankfully, we had the good old solid dependable ham. We brought it out to everyone’s vast relief, and Macho Guy sliced it and served it. Everyone tasted it. Everyone chewed it. Everyone swallowed it. No one spit it out. At last, my mother-in-law and I had something to be thankful for.

Macho Guy’s older sister and her husband had been delayed and arrived when the rest of us had just about finished eating. The others regaled them with a grossly exaggerated tale of the lethal culinary disaster my mother-in-law and I had prepared, claiming we tried to poison everyone so we could collect their life insurance benefits. Ha-Ha. Very funny.

Well, this particular brother-in-law of Macho’s was widely known for his cast iron stomach. He asked if we had any of the pheasant left. We did. There was quite a lot left in the baking pan that we hadn’t yet consigned to the garbage disposal. He said he’d like to try it. Everyone did his best to dissuade him, but he was insistent.

I brought out the baking pan containing the remains of the infamous Pheasant en Crap. Macho’s brother-in-law encouraged me to pile a huge portion on his plate, and then he dug in with gusto. The rest of us waited for the inevitable gagging and probable puking. Instead, he pronounced it delicious and asked for seconds. And thirds. We all watched dumbstruck as he chowed down. Not only did he have a cast iron stomach, he also had cast iron taste buds.

My mother-in-law and I never lived down that we prepared the most absolutely terrible, horrible, inedible, worst thanksgiving dinner ever. We heard about it every Thanksgiving thereafter, ad infinitum. We were not alone in our infamy, however. Macho’s brother-in-law never lived down that he ate that incredibly inedible bird without gagging or puking, that he enjoyed it so much that he asked for seconds and thirds, and then he lived to tell about it. Thus memorable family legends are born.

I wish you all a Thanksgiving that is happy and nothing like the disaster I just described.

I do not care for giving the day after Thanksgiving such a downbeat name as Black Friday. I think Black Friday would be more appropriate in October at Halloween.

The first time I heard the phrase, I thought a disaster of major proportions occurred on that day in the past—for example, an extinction-level volcanic eruption such as Krakatoa or a stock market crash. A salesclerk patiently explained to the clueless that it was just the opposite of disaster: merchants coined the name because it is the biggest sales day of the year for them and is so lucrative it is the day that puts retail stores “in the black” [ink, that is]. Charming. Maybe it’s just me, but Thanksgiving and Black Friday are like oil and water. On the fourth Thursday in November, we gather our families together to be cheerful and thankful for our blessings, and then the day afterward is (gasp) Black Friday when many of us shop till we drop. Occasionally, some shoppers literally drop other shoppers who stand between them and one of a store’s few door-buster sales items. Perhaps Feeding Frenzy Friday would be a more descriptive name than Black Friday.

I’ve been shopping online for the past several years. The phrase Cyber Monday sounds more upbeat and benign than Black Friday, doesn’t it? It’s much more convenient and less of a hassle to go from one website to another than it is to drive from one brick and mortar store to another and hunt for non-existent parking spaces before one even gets to shop at all. When I shop online, I don’t have to camp out the night before in front of a store in the November frigid cold. I can shop when I choose on my computer, and I can shop in my pajamas while savoring a cup of hot chocolate with mini marshmallows. No one ever tackles me or tries to rip a bargain from my grasp while I’m shopping on my computer in my pajamas while savoring a cup of hot chocolate with mini marshmallows.

I’m a grandparent now. I take time out from being a Christmas Curmudgeon to enjoy going with my grandchildren and their parents to the children’s Christmas Eve mass, and I enjoy giving gifts to my grandchildren at Christmas and seeing their faces light up as mine once did at their ages. Those things are still meaningful and fun for me.

In addition to buying gifts for my grandchildren and close friends, I choose a tag each year from my church’s Christmas Giving Tree to provide a gift for an anonymous person, child or family in need. It rekindles my Christmas spirit, and it just plain makes me feel good to make a deserving person’s Christmas a bit merrier.

I no longer write a Christmas newsletter to send to everyone I know. [They’re probably grateful for that and who can blame them. Seriously.] I don’t mail out Christmas cards anymore. I send electronic Christmas greeting cards nowadays. They’re different, I like them, and my friends and family members say they are fun to receive. [The US Postal Service is undoubtedly unhappy about that. Well, they’re the ones who keep raising the price of stamps.]

Macho Guy used to be a Christmas decorating fanatic. Since he and I now spend our Christmases with our sons and their families in their homes, the Christmas decorations around here have been toned down considerably. We don’t hang wreaths. We don’t hang stockings. We don’t hang Christmas lights from the eaves. Our only decoration right now is a small artificial tree that we have on display in the living room. For years, we took that tree down from the attic, put it together, decorated it, and then reversed gears after Christmas. Finally, we decided to leave it decorated, cover it with a sheet, store it under the stairway to the lower level, and take it out each year in December. All we need to do is uncover it, put the Angel on top, and we’re done decorating. Spending Christmas with the kids and grandkids at their homes comes with an added bonus. Our grown children and their spouses do all the work. Macho Guy and I just show up with gifts and great big smiles on our faces and play with our grandchildren.

My Christmas season is fairly low key. However, I do make a few exceptions. For the past few years, I’ve been having fun on my computer counting down the days to Christmas with Jacquie Lawson’s animated advent calendar. Every December before Christmas, Macho Guy and I go with friends to quaint little Frankenmuth, Michigan for dinner, a bit of Christmas shopping in the quaint little shops, and to enjoy all the fabulous outdoor Christmas decorations and Christmas lights there. We attend several Christmas parties annually and make merry. We attend Christmas mass to hear again the Good News of Christ’s birth and take in the beauty of the almost-large-as-life manger on the altar. I watch my parents’ favorite uplifting Christmas movies every year without fail: It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Miracle on 34^th Street (the 1947 classic version), and Scrooge (the 1951 British version of A Christmas Carol starring Alistair Sim—the best Scrooge ever). Viewing those films takes me back to the Christmases of my childhood. I confess that Scrooge is my favorite guilty Christmas pleasure. It never fails to bring me to tears.

Oh, dear. I just reread what I’ve written and I am amazed to realize that I am not the complete Christmas Curmudgeon I believed myself to be. It appears that I do not entirely dislike the Christmas season. I have found different ways to enjoy it in the present than the ways I enjoyed it in the past. I am not a curmudgeonly Scroogette after all—but you never heard that from me. I have a certain image to protect.