My family never celebrated Thanksgiving. While I was born and raised in Chicago, my parents were immigrants. Thanksgiving never meant anything to us except for creating hand turkeys in school when I was young. But this year, my cousins and I decided to have a Thanksgiving together, without the parents.
All of my cousins who lived in Chicago were invited so there were about 18 of us in total. There were seven guys, who were all in charge of decor and 11 girls who were in charge of the food. The rest of my cousins lived in other states and countries, so, unfortunately, they couldn’t make it.
The preparations started about a month ago. We split the cost of the turkey. Of course, we had no idea how to cook the turkey. We just watched a bunch of videos and read a bunch of articles on how to cook turkeys. We were terrified about giving everyone food poisoning.
Everyone was in charge of their own dish. I chose to make a dish based on baked potatoes and chicken. Some other dishes that were included were pecan pie, chicken pot pie, creamed corn, and baked macaroni and cheese.
We all sat and served ourselves. The turkey was dry because we forgot to brine it. It was honestly, in my opinion, worse than the last time I ate it. Since it was our first time, we forgave ourselves. We said what each of us was thankful for (I said my mom and how she helped me through depression). The food made me sick and I wish I didn’t eat so much. I honestly was very close to throwing up. There was a lot of leftover food. I don’t know what to do with it.
We sang a bit too.
I was surprised at how real we all were during the thanking part. I always thought we would brush it off and make it full of humor, but we didn’t. By the end, we were all tearing up and it was great. There were some funny ones, but a lot more sentimental ones.
After dinner, we played some games like jeopardy, pin the head on the turkey, beer pong, and murder mystery. We had dessert, which signaled the end of the night. I absolutely loved it and want it to happen again next year! It wasn’t necessarily a Thanksgiving that I pictured, but the chance for all of us to hang out, which I guess is what Thanksgiving is about.