TBL Staff Shares Its Least-Favorite Thanksgiving Dishes
By Mike Cardillo
Thanksgiving is a great holiday, quite possibly the best we have going. Of course it’s not 100 percent perfect, so we posed a simple question around TBL HQ — what is your least-favorite Thanksgiving food item? (A debate that will surely ‘break the Internet’ as it were.)
Enjoy our thoughts and have a happy Thanksgiving!
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Mike Cardillo: The easy answer here would be my mother’s mashed turnips — mostly because I still have the eating habits of a seven-year-old. Instead I’m going to give a total cop-out answer: nothing. Thanksgiving isn’t a holiday filled with rules. Eat what you like, pass on the stuff you don’t. If you want three pounds of turkey soaked in a 16-ounce bottle of gravy with a napkin formed out of stuffing, go for it. It’s your holiday.
Stephen Douglas: Barry Sanders-less Detroit Lions football. Is that a food? If not then the entire meal. If the turkey isn’t deep-fried, it’s not worth consuming. Stuffing? What is that? Vegetables? Blah. Let’s go get pizza and watch “John Wick” again.
Ty Duffy: Mashed potatoes. There are many wonderful ways to enjoy potatoes. Having them liquified with a dump truck full of butter and cream may be the absolute worst. Flavorless, overly filling black hole of calories. Probably comes from a box. You don’t even need to chew it. Mashed potatoes embody basically everything wrong with America. Switch to sweet potatoes. Boil them yourselves. Toss in some cinnamon and other spices. It tastes better. It even looks more Thanksgivingy Enjoy your gravy as God intended, with bread. Preemptively, cranberry sauce is awesome and also easily made without a can. Best item: Scotch.
Ryan Glasspiegel: Since Thanksgiving is a buffet, there isn’t really anything I dislike. I’ve said this a time or two before, but it remains BAFFLING that there aren’t any clips of John Madden going ham on a turducken that I can find on YouTube. The closest thing to that is Frank Caliendo imitating it, and frankly that doesn’t cut it. This is the surest sign yet that our nation is in decline.
Jason Lisk: Okay, so let me just jump in here. (1) never had turnips on Thanksgiving, so yeah, that would be my choice, if I were presented it. I’ll go rolls, if forced to eliminate anything. I’m not a bread guy, but when so much else is there, it’s just filler. As for potatoes, I’m in charge of them this year, Ty, and I whip them up (no boxes, some golden ones I picked out), and there is no rule against having that and sweet potatoes. I love stuffing, I love cranberries. Green beans with the creamy mushroom sauce that my mom makes, and the fried onion strings on top. Oh, and the bottle of Jameson.
Jason McIntyre: I’ve never had a turnip. Nor a mushroom (on purpose). I’m a creature of habit, and even on Thanksgiving I gravitate to almost the same things every year: turkey, a couple servings of mac & cheese, multiple rolls and mashed potatoes. Yes to the carbs, no to the veggies (I’ll set a good example for my kids and eat a carrot or piece of asparagus – note the singular – but then it’s right back to the unhealthy stuff.). You won’t see me touch butternut squash unless cash is involved.
Michael Shamburger: I pretty much eat everything that’s prepared unless it has cheese on it, but that’s a story for another day. The one thing I do not particularly enjoy is canned jelly cranberry sauce. The rest of my family seems to enjoy it and insist on attempting to get me to try it, which I reluctantly do just to please the masses. There’s just something about a big blob of cranberry from a can that I don’t care for. On the other hand, cranberry sauce made from scratch is wonderful.
[Photo via Getty]