It's a geek Thanksgiving! On Here & Now, Instructables' Christy Canida shares tools for organizing Thanksgiving dinner - Gantt chart, purchasing calculator, kitchen workstation for workflow management, stastical analysis of turkey cooking, and more. You'll also find results of their Take Thanksgiving to the Next Level contest, like the giant fractal pecan pie, the 20-sided pie-cosahedron, and the recirculating gravy fountain.
posted by Miko on Nov 24, 2008 - 29 comments

Thanksgiving Dinner Buzzword Bingo helps make tonight's dinner with family a little more palatable. Print out cards for you and your other cool relative (spouse, sibling) and check off a box every time one of these situations happens. First to get 5 in a row wins. Remember to shout "Bingo!" at the table.
posted by FeldBum on Nov 24, 2005 - 12 comments

Thanksgiving Bill of Fare - "If you will boile chickens, young turkeys, peahens, or any house fowl daintily, you shall, after you have trimmed them, drawn them, trussed them, and washed them, fill their bellies as full of parsley as they can hold; then boil them with salt and water only till they be enough." When sated with peahens and house fowl you might have enjoyed a taste of Pumpion Pie. Early colonial cuisine probably borrowed heavily from the New Booke of Cookerie from London and were no doubt greatly influenced by native recipes and cooking customs.
posted by madamjujujive on Nov 28, 2002 - 7 comments

Happy Thanksgiving or Is It? In 1939, Franklin Delano Roosevelt responed to pressure from the National Retail Dry Goods Association to move the official date of Thanksgiving back one week to the next-to-last Thursday of the month. FDR hoped that this would enliven the economy by adding one week to the Christmas shopping season, but he received considerable political flak for tampering with what many viewed as a sacred religious holiday. (Thanksgiving is considered sacred even though it only became a national holiday due to lobbying by the editor of a 19th century woman's magazine.) New Deal-era Republicans were especially bothered by the calendar change and one essayist at the American Enterprise Institute still seems to carry a grudge. Congress later resolved the issue by passing a resolution in 1941 that designated Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday of November.
posted by jonp72 on Nov 26, 2002 - 11 comments

Happy Turkey Day! Now turn off the computer and get back to your family...
posted by grant on Nov 25, 1999 - 0 comments