This is an All Ears English podcast episode 1269.
Turkey Talk, five elements that make a typical American Thanksgiving.
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Today, you'll find out what turkey pants are and what Americans do on a typical Thanksgiving.
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Hey, Jessica, happy Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving.
I love Thanksgiving.
I love Thanksgiving because that means it's the beginning of the Christmas season for me.
Oh, it's all about Christmas for you.
Interesting.
Well, I have just the opposite perspective for me.
It's like if I could just take Thanksgiving and run with that and eliminate, like Halloween and maybe Christmas, I'd be good.
Maybe just have like three Thanksgivings a year.
Yeah, yeah.
That would be great.
Exactly.
I'm excited to be on today guys.
Today is Thanksgiving Thursday, right?
Thanksgiving always falls, I believe on the third Thursday of November.
So Jessica, what are we talking about today for our listeners?
So guys, we are going to tell you the five elements of a typical American Thanksgiving.
Yes.
Love it.
This is great.
So we were just laughing when we were reflecting and planning this episode.
Because there are some commonalities that most people have in their household on Thanksgiving Day, right.
Yeah, no, for sure.
And some of them, like, some of them we will make fun of, right?
Definitely.
It's a stereotype, but...
To every stereotype, it begins with a grain of truth.
And I think a lot of the stuff that we're going to talk about today does happen in every household on Thanksgiving.
But I think just... We are going to make fun of some stuff for sure, but...
I just I love the overall.
Like the most important thing about Thanksgiving is that you're spending a relaxed day with family and friends, and it's all about food and relaxing.
Like, and you kind of make that what you will.
Like these days, a lot of people aren't near their families anymore.
So Thanksgiving does become this like excuse to gather together, like random friends you know, and just have a potluck and eat lots of food and just do nothing.
Yeah, no, it's great.
It's great.
And so this could also be great for you guys, our listeners if, you guys, maybe you are living in the US and you've been invited to someone's Thanksgiving dinner.
Maybe some friends are having a Friendsgiving, right?
That also happens, as you just mentioned, Jessica.
Or maybe you're invited to someone's family Thanksgiving dinner.
So you will be ready.
You will know what to expect and you'll probably smile mile and think of all there's english when you experience these things.
So jessica, what would be the first thing we can expect to see at a typical thanksgiving dinner?
So in the morning guys, people start cooking super early because that enormous bird that turkey, like it, takes all day to cook And it's like a constant sort of battle too.
I remember, so my mom would always cook Thanksgiving dinner, of course.
And so she would always, no matter how many people were coming, it could be three people.
It could be 10 people.
She would always buy the biggest turkey she possibly could.
And just because she cooks a lot.
She's always cooked a lot.
And so it does take all day, guys.
And so the turkey has to be like prepared in the morning, and all the stuffing has to be put inside the bird.
You have to take out the gizzards.
The innards or whatever, because those are going to be part of the gravy later.
And it's like all this very specific sort of like steps to making this turkey.
So if you're not a cook, you get to sleep in and you wake up to the beginning smells of this, like gorgeous roasting fowl in the oven.
Yeah.
A fowl.
I love that.
That is a bonus word for today.
Fowl means bird, right?
Any kind of bird.
Yeah, I love it.
I love it.
Yeah, it's true.
I had the same experience as a kid.
I just have this clear memory of waking up on Thanksgiving Thursday around like 7 a.m., 8 a.m.
And you just smell that turkey smell permeating throughout the entire house.
It's great.
It's great.
Yeah, it's lovely.
And the thought just occurred to me about the time of year and why it's so nice to get to sleep in at that – like on a Thursday for a kid because, like you've already been through a lot of tough stuff at school, right.
School is like ratcheted up and first semester is almost over or whatever.
You're probably starting to talk about – exams or you know projects and stuff like that.
So getting a day off school is super special, and it's already getting cold outside and so you're all like snuggled and it's easier to sleep in, so it's like a very special time of year also.
That's a good point.
It just wouldn't be the same if it were like sweltering hot outside and you've got turkey cooking in the stove.
It just wouldn't be the same.
It wouldn't be the same.
I mean, I don't know, maybe some parts of our country, maybe Florida, but still it's at least probably 50 or 40 degrees everywhere in the US, I would guess.
Yeah.
Anyways, I think it's so funny that turkey is such a core piece of Thanksgiving.
But honestly, most people don't even like it that much in my experience.
Do you like turkey?
Like I love turkey.
You do.
OK, then your mom must have been really good at cooking it, because usually turkey, in my experience, is a little dry and it's definitely more about the sides that I love.
Okay, so that's why I'm saying it's an all-day thing cooking a good turkey.
I remember my mom, every hour on the hour or whatever, she would have to go and baste the turkey.
So basting is when...
You have like a big suction thingy and you suck up the juices and the butter from the roasting pan and you squirt it over the top of the turkey.
And you have to do that like every hour throughout the day so it's not dry.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a big undertaking.
Yeah.
It's a very high.
I know we tried having a Friendsgiving in Boston a few years ago.
We messed up the turkey.
I mean, this is the kind of thing that I guess if you, especially if you're a mom or a dad, like fathers, can cook turkeys too.
Right.
For sure.
For sure.
But my mom always cooked the turkey.
But you get better as you get older.
I guess we learn this with age.
Yeah.
And I just I've never cooked a turkey.
Yeah.
I mean, it's not easy.
Right.
So that's the big challenge of Thanksgiving Day.
But for me, Jessica, it's all about the sides.
So what is number two?
Like what is the second core element that that we are going to see at an American Thanksgiving?
Yes.
So around lunchtime you'll probably start preparing the sides, because Thanksgiving dinner doesn't happen at dinnertime.
It usually happens at like two or three in the afternoon, I feel like.
So like a couple hours before that, you'll start preparing the sides.
So the stereotypical sides would be the stuffing which is cooking in the turkey from the morning like pieces of bread and celery and onion whatever you put in there.
And it's cooked inside the bird, which is cool.
And then we always have mashed potatoes, and then potatoes gravy, and then everybody has their own gravy recipes, right um, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes yams corn, and then, of course, the desserts pumpkin pie.
Oh, and don't forget, one thing i always loved was banana bread or cornbread, that is also.
We didn't have that, Oh yeah.
We had banana bread too.
So yeah, there's so much good stuff.
Oh my gosh.
So for me, it's like I'll load up my plate with all those sides and have a tiny piece of turkey.
I have like, I think also because I'm diabetic, so I always have to have like a lot of protein on my plate, right so?
But I would eat the same anyway.
I think I would have a lot of turkey and then lots of mashed potatoes and stuffing, not a lot of vegetables because, and then Just douse everything, drown it all in gravy.
And I love combining all the bites.
So like on one bite, I'll have some turkey, some stuffing and some potatoes.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's awesome.
And this is really personal, too, right?
Different families have different traditions of other things they like to make.
Like my mom used to like to make turnips because she grew up eating turnips all the time.
So that was part of our one of the sides that was very traditional in my house growing up.
So this is also like very much very personal to the individual family, too.
So this can be very for sure.
For sure.
I mean, it goes back to this idea of it being such an important family holiday.
I remember growing up my mom had this grinding machine.
This really like antique grinding machine that she'd inherited from her mom, who had inherited it from her.
And that's how we used to make the cranberry sauce.
We would get cranberries and grind them.
And it was like really hard because it's just like all like muscle grinding all of this stuff.
And but it was like a really special part of the afternoon was to use this super old machine to make this dish.
Yeah.
So there's often an element of tradition that goes back in different generations, back to previous generations.
I think that's really core to Thanksgiving and what it means is kind of remembering your history as a family and what people have done before.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Yeah, for sure.
The third element, right?
Not everybody is cooking and even people cooking aren't doing it all day.
So what are people doing the rest of the time?
Yeah.
So before eating or, you know, usually before eating, people are doing football.
I mean football doing football.
This is the funny thing about you know.
I feel like football and thanksgiving kind of go hand in hand right, they really do.
So, you know, more often than not, football will be on the tv and there'll be some big game happening.
I don't know.
Yeah, the bigger teams are playing yeah yeah, i think there's like special gate, like the rose bowl or the whatever, like bowl game, but also um, The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade happens.
Oh my gosh.
I forgot about that.
That is so huge.
Yeah.
I just now remember that.
Right.
So usually like that starts around 9 a.m. or 8 a.m.
And then football is more in the afternoon typically.
I love that.
Totally.
So the Thanksgiving Day Parade, there's always like enormous like floats and balloons.
And it's like it's a huge, huge thing, you guys, that happened.
It's in New York, right?
Yeah, it's in New York.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
So it happens in New York, but it's on TV like in the whole country.
Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's absolutely freezing and sometimes it's not so bad.
It just depends on the year.
It's really a shoulder season there.
End of Thanksgiving.
And then people will also be kind of snacking on maybe starting the first glass of wine, for example, or snacking on things you know.
Yeah.
I think we didn't mention that in the side dishes, but wine.
Wine, of course.
Wine is important on Thanksgiving.
And like you just said, Lindsay, when people start drinking that, it could be any time.
It's also a very personal choice.
It depends.
Yeah, no, that's so true.
That's so true.
Okay.
And then of course we go to, what do we call the feast, right?
We go, we turn off football and we sit down.
And when does that usually happen?
We said around what time?
Like around two or three in the afternoon.
And, depending on when people have started drinking wine, this could be an interesting interaction, you guys.
I think another stereotypical element of any time families get together is Um and there's maybe too much time spent together and not enough to do.
Um, they might, there might be some drama happening over the meal.
Oh, for sure.
I mean especially, as you know, adult siblings get old become, you know, become adult.
Siblings become adults.
And maybe there's argument over what to do with your parents as they get older or sure. who knows someone you know someone's will like it could get pretty heavy right there could be and there could be in-laws there or you know husbands and wives of the siblings that don't get along all sorts of things can come up I feel like like yeah like there's always some black sheep that other people don't like like oh I can't believe she brought her boyfriend remember what he did last year and then like there's yeah like who knows yeah and this is also you know this is portrayed in movies too right guys so you're gonna know you'll see this in the movies that's why i kind of smile when we talk about this because it's so it feels like home right not just because it's been my experience but it's been the experience of our media culture right movies and tv shows you see it everywhere oh yeah for sure oh my gosh well the movie would be boring if everybody got along oh for sure And so before we were recording and we were brainstorming this episode, you mentioned a phrase that made me laugh a lot.
Turkey pants.
Well, this is what follows.
So as we just said, we have our feast and our family drama, if there is that, right?
And then we move on to the fifth element guys, of what makes a traditional American Thanksgiving, which is turkey pants.
I was so surprised that you didn't know this term.
I thought you would.
That's so funny.
It's just it's one of those phrases that's really fun to say.
Just like turkey pants.
If like, that's something like, instead of swearing like, instead of saying a bad word, that's something I would call someone like oh, stop being a turkey pants.
Oh, that's awesome.
I love that.
I mean so, in case you guys aren't catching on to what this means.
Basically, you know, by the time we finish feasting, right at the dinner table, it's time to, all of a sudden we step away from the table and we have a brick in our stomachs right, because we We have overeaten.
I mean, that's just that's what you do at Thanksgiving is you eat too much.
It's just the way it is.
So you have to put on pants that are going to stretch.
So turkey pants are really sweat pants that have a stretch waistband.
So funny.
But yeah.
Oh, my gosh.
You have like I feel like Thanksgiving is it's like a, it's like people have like a buffet mentality, like they have to eat as much as possible to make it worthwhile.
Like it's a qualification.
And if if you don't have second and third helpings, right, like second and third plates of food.
Then whoever cooked the meal is going to be like, what's wrong?
You don't like it?
What is the turkey dry?
Come on, have some more.
And like, so you really do just like have to just keep eating until you're full to the brim.
Like you literally cannot eat another bite.
Exactly.
And I love it.
And conveniently, what goes along with turkey pants and turkey is tryptophan.
Which is that drug that we find in Turkey, which has been proved to make people sleepy.
And I also think that might be why we do dinner at two or three in the afternoon.
I mean, we don't do much after the dinner, right?
I mean, we basically just nap.
I mean, is that what you do?
Your family does?
Yeah.
I feel like people just sort of like lay around on the couch and some people fall asleep.
Yeah.
And then you have like this groggy waking up period in the evening.
Yeah.
Right.
Because you don't just like go to sleep at like five and then not wake up until the next morning.
Right.
So you'll probably wake up around, you know, like, I don't know, six or seven maybe.
And what would happen then?
I guess people probably start drinking again or maybe if they're healthy, they go for a walk.
Yeah, I mean, I would think things like taking a walk, although it could be like bitingly cold.
I know it has been historically in New Hampshire for Thanksgiving or maybe something like family games, like board games.
You might all get together, play some board games or watch a movie.
We used to let...
We used to have the tradition of watching Home Alone because it was always on TV on Thanksgiving.
So that kicks off Doing something that kind of kicks off the holiday season, that would be the time to do it.
Totally.
Like watching a Christmas movie at night.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then, of course, you've got leftovers.
So...
So you'll find people getting up.
If you have family staying at your home, you may find people getting up at midnight for a midnight snack of like a turkey sandwich, right.
Because there's going to be tons of leftovers.
Yeah.
No, that's true.
I think that's what does happen in the evening.
No matter how much I eat, I'm always going to be hungry again a few hours later because I eat a lot.
So yeah, I'll fix myself another plate of food.
I love it.
So guys, this is what a typical American Thanksgiving looks like.
And as you're listening to this episode, on Thursday Thanksgiving Day, we are in one of these stages.
I know.
I wonder where we'll be at.
Maybe we'll do some Instagram updates, Jessica, to share our experience.
Who knows?
Okay.
I'm going to write a town.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Maybe you guys, if you guys get lucky, I mean, we don't work on Thanksgiving day.
So if you get lucky, you might see us on Instagram.
We'll see, but guys go over to our Instagram channel and make sure you join.
So you can enjoy these moments with us.
We can share these with you.
There's been some good bonus vocab that has come out of today's episode Jessica oh my gosh oh my gosh such great vocab today you guys like foul oh my gosh such interesting words today um yeah oh my gosh if you're not on the app that is the place to get these interesting words and save them to your personal power vocab list yes So if you have an iOS device, guys, go to allearsenglish.com forward slash bonuses.
Get on the app.
Start building that personal power vocab list.
Yep, exactly.
And that is also the only place where you can get real-time transcripts, right?
You can watch the transcript progress down the screen as you're listening to our show.
So awesome.
Now I'm actually really excited for Thanksgiving, Jessica.
All right.
It's been great hanging out and reflecting here.
I'll see you back on the show next week.
All right.
Sounds good.
Take care.
Bye.
Bye.
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