Happy Thanksgiving From AFP!
November 24th, 2010
It’s turkey day again and this year, AFP is giving thanks for Marney’s legendary Thanksgiving Letter. When we received this a year ago, little did we know the cult following it would receive. Read it for the first time, read it again, but most importantly, do not forget anything!
From: Marney
As you all know a fabulous Thanksgiving Dinner does not make itself. I need to ask each of you to help by bringing something to complete the meal. I truly appreciate your offers to assist with the meal preparation.
Now, while I do have quite a sense of humor and joke around all the time, I COULD NOT BE MORE SERIOUS when I am providing you with your Thanksgiving instructions and orders. I am very particular, so please perform your task EXACTLY as I have requested and read your portion very carefully. If I ask you to bring your offering in a container that has a lid, bring your offering in a container WITH A LID, NOT ALUMINUM FOIL! If I ask you to bring a serving spoon for your dish, BRING A SERVING SPOON, NOT A SOUP SPOON! And please do not forget anything.
All food that is to be cooked should already be prepared, bring it hot and ready to serve, warm or room temp. These are your ONLY THREE options. Anything meant to be served cold should, of course, already be cold.
The Mike Byron Family
1. Turnips in a casserole with a lid and a serving spoon. Please do not fill the casserole all the way up to the top, it gets too messy. I know this may come as a bit of a surprise to you, but most of us hate turnips so don’t feel like you a have to feed an army.
2. Two half gallons of ice cream, one must be VANILLA, I don’t care what the other one is. No store brands please. I did see an ad this morning for Hagan Daz Peppermint Bark Ice Cream, yum!! (no pressure here, though).
3. Toppings for the ice cream.
4. A case of bottled water, NOT gallons, any brand is ok.
The Bob Byron Family
1. Green beans or asparagus (not both) in a casserole with a lid and a serving spoon. If you are making the green beans, please prepare FOUR pounds, if you are making asparagus please prepare FIVE pounds. It is up to you how you wish to prepare them, no soupy sauces, no cheese (you know how Mike is), a light sprinkling of toasted nuts, or pancetta, or some EVOO would be a nice way to jazz them up.
2. A case of beer of your choice (I have Coors Light and Corona) or a bottle of clos du bois chardonnay (you will have to let me know which you will bring prior to 11/22).
The Lisa Byron Chesterford Family
1. Lisa as a married woman you are now required to contribute at the adult level. You can bring an hors d’ouvres. A few helpful hints/suggestions. Keep it very light, and non-filling, NO COCKTAIL SAUCE, no beans of any kind. I think your best bet would be a platter of fresh veggies and dip. Not a huge platter mind you (i.e., not the plastic platter from the supermarket).
The Michelle Bobble Family
1. Stuffing in a casserole with a serving spoon. Please make the stuffing sans meat.
2. 2.5-3 qts. of mashed squash in a casserole with a lid and serving spoon
3. Proscuitto pin wheel – please stick to the recipe, no need to bring a plate.
4. A pie knife
The June Davis Family
1. 15 LBS of mashed potatoes in a casserole with a serving spoon. Please do not use the over-size blue serving dish you used last year. Because you are making such a large batch you can do one of two things: put half the mash in a regulation size casserole with lid and put the other half in a plastic container and we can just replenish with that or use two regulation size casserole dishes with lids. Only one serving spoon is needed.
2. A bottle of clos du bois chardonnay
The Amy Misto Family (why do I even bother she will never read this)
1. A pumpkin pie in a pie dish (please use my silver palate recipe) no knife needed.
2. An apple pie in a pie dish, you can use your own recipe, no knife needed.
Looking forward to the 28th!!
Marney
(kindly submitted by Kara at http://californiakara.blogspot.com)
sucks to be June Davis family. 15lbs of mashed potatoes??? if i had to prepare 15lbs of mashed potatoes in one go i think I would have nightmares!!
Letter makes reference to someone recently being married… And all the different last names suggests that Marnie could have had a couple daughters… If this is the case, I am AMAZED any of her offspring managed to snag a husband and I wonder how the wedding planning went… smh
Is this for real? If this is not a joke (which I highly suspect that it is), then Marney is clearly a psychopath. Please lock her up sooner rather than later.
We love Marney! Every family has a Marney because every family NEEDS a Marney. We understand that you want to have a delicious, well-planned meal that you aren’t doing all by yourself. We’ve been to plenty of dinners with family members who drop by any grocery store on the way and grab store-bought mashed potatoes and generic ice cream (or nothing at all) while we’ve hovered over a stove for hours making sure our contribution was delicious. We get you Marney! You’ve done what we’ve wanted to for a long, long time. Happy Thanksgiving to all you Marney’s out there!!
Oh, Marney, Marney, Marney. You must surely be Queen of the world. You are all-knowing and all-powerful. I regret that I will not be able to attend your festive repast.
patty
I have a sister in law like this but I choose to ignore her. Her husband told me one time to never make corn casserole again for a family dinner. So , guess what I make? LMAO!
I have to honestly say I have THREE people like Marney in my family. The best way to deal with anyone like that is to do anything BUT what they say. The rest of our family (we are around 50+ at every family gathering) loves to irk them on. We received phone calls before the latest family gathering. I live 12 hours away and absolutely have to do the opposite of what my family member says on principle alone. The last phone call I received, 4th of July BBQ of all things, I was instructed to bring 1 tub of potato salad from Sam’s Club, 1 tub of Fried chicken from KFC (drumsticks only), a large bowl of homemade fruit salad (the actual instructions were to put all cut up fruits into separate bowls because everyone may not like bananas next to their grapes), and last but not least, 6 2-liter bottles of name brand soda, not store brands. In my defense, I was a bit peeved to get the call for the family gathering 2 days before said gathering and I live so far away. Oh and throw in my husband is gone to Afghanistan so I get to drag 3 children across state lines to get there. But to them that’s neither here nor there so what’s a patriotic person like me to do? I brought a bunch of bananas, an 8 piece meal from KFC, a small tub of potato salad from Wal-Mart and I brought homemade kool-aid in “recycled” milk jugs. Funny, I haven’t gotten a call for the upcoming Thanksgiving potluck…weird.
that. is. awesome.
and God Speed to your husband coming home!
Oh Yeah! U r my soul sista – love, love, love it. .
If she’s so concerned about the “Amy Misto Family” not reading this letter, why doesn’t she just call them, instead of complaining about their lack of willingness to feed into her OCD?
For the dears who are leaving comments that are serious in nature, asking what illness marney suffers from or does she know she is this rude: this letter is so hilariously over the top, so insane, so incompatible with human origin – that you just have to laugh! If it’s true that every family has one – then let’s ALL laugh! Loudly! At whatever holiday or occasion causes the nut to explode! Wouldn’t it be a huge ice-breaker to have a marney at a funeral? I love people, and I just don’t like to see anyone be gotten down by someone like this. Look at what anonymous sender accomplished by exposing marney’s ocd, excuse me, marney, that’s cdo ofr you, to the world?
Dear Marney,
We are sorry to inform you we will be unable to attend. Since we haven’t been able to locate the object you seem to have misplaced somewhere in and orifice of your body and cannot remove it. We will be trying to locate a physician who can perform the delicate procedure you are in desperate need of.
To the rest of the family: Donations are now being accepted for Marney’s medical treatment or her divorce. Whichever will come first. If both happen simultaneously we ask that you consider donating extra. Just bring the cash in a plastic bucket covered with foil and a wooden spoon. Don’t forget the Bush beer and Strawberry Hill. We will provide the rest.
best comment ever
This is focking ridiculous.
If you’re going to host Thanksgiving, then host Thanksgiving–that means making all the hot food yourself. Make the 15# of “mash” (fock it, make 20 pounds so you can make potato pancakes later) 2 days before & put it in the Nesco cooker. Warm it up the day of. Done. Same with the stuffing & green beans & for Sweet Christ’s sake if no one likes turnips, then why have someone bring them???
You have to give people other stuff to bring, like the desserts (if you’re that picky about pie make your own focking pie), the veggie tray?, the green salad?, the relish tray (pickles/olives)?, and the fruit salad?. Those are all things that are relatively easy to make & bring but no one’s going to cry if they’re not there. Or anything else they might want to bring. Transporting hot food is a pain in the ass, but if you make THE BEST sweet potatoes & want to share them with us, fine, knock yourself out.
I want to know if Marney is still writing letters.
I truly enjoyed reading the letter and certainly the comments. So much so that I couldn’t resist to ask something. Has anyone given thought to the notion that Marney was trying to dissuade people from coming? The letter is written in such perfect “high handedness” I have to wonder if the reaction from the commenters is exactly what Marney wanted from her “guests”? I couldn’t think of a better way to tell people to get “stuffed”.
Thank goodness we don’t have Thanksgiving in Australia. If someone sent a letter like that to me, they’d probably get a reply sent back to them in a highly non regulation casserole dish containing a meal made entirely of baked turd.
“Dear Marney.
Just letting you know that we’ll be there late. Can’t be arsed to turn up on time. I will be using tin foil, as in wearing it. Just tin foil, nothing else. Also, we may or may not be bringing a half eaten bag of chips, some flat soda, and a bottle of cheap sherry that our great Aunt Ida left for us in her will that’s been sitting near the hot water system for the last 10 years. I’ll be bringing an empty casserole dish, the largest I can find, screw the regulations, so I can throw the stale chips in for amusement while I regale the family with tales of my sexual exploits. I plan on staying till at least 1am, and I’ll be bringing 20 of my death metal band friends, who really want to sing you their version of Christmas Carols. They’ll bring their own beer, one of the guys is called “10 Carton Chugger”. I’ll leave that up to you to figure out why. They can also bring 15 pounds of some mashed substance that is possibly illegal in many countries.
As far as the stuffing and the spoons go, you be creative with that. You have a good imagination.
Looking forward to Thanksgiving.
Yours, the family.
I love it! Especially the tin foil part!
Thanks so much for the laugh…..loved it!
Sorry Marney, I have other plans this year!
Man, what a control freak! Unfortunately, there’s someone like Marney in every family. The real question is why do we let them get away with their obnoxious behavior?
God if this is what Marney’s like, can you imagine how HER parents behaved? Personalities like this do not get created spontaneously.