There’s a big difference between eating with your family and a “family dinner.”

Eating with your family can be a sandwich in the car, or a microwaved Szechuan Gourmet from two nights ago at 11 p.m. But family dinner is something different. It’s where people you barely know who live hours away come over to schmooze with your parents and then pretend they know what’s going on in your life and use your bathroom.

I never did like family dinner.

Thanksgiving is awful because it consists of family dinner and a bunch of football games that my teams are never in. Sure, turkey’s all right, but is it really worth all the hassle?

When I think of Thanksgiving cocktails, my immediate inclination is toward gravy washed vodka. It’s very simple to make, and just as vile as it sounds. All you have to do is take your best vodka, gravy and whatever’s left of your self-respect, put it in a jar and freeze it.

Once the gravy freezes, scrape it off the top and strain your vodka. This’ll give you a nice, gravy-tasting vodka that you can totally justify drinking too much of at the dinner table. You can totally drink this straight, because it tastes like gravy. You can also mix it with tomato juice to make a nice cocktail.

Meat products and alcohol are actually not as strange a combination as you may think. Although not particularly popular in 2017, the Bloody Bull is a well-known variation on the Bloody Mary that utilizes beef bouillon in its recipe.

Whether your parents are arguing with relatives about politics, or your third cousin who thinks he’s cool because he used to be an inner-city cop or a prison guard or something keeps asking when you’re going to quit “that stupid writing thing” and get one of those good government jobs that they’re “basically just handing out, even to people like you,” gravy vodka has you covered.

It’s only gotta take you so far, anyways.

Once everyone falls into a tryptophan-induced coma, you’re hopping in an Uber downtown, parking your ass at the Chinese restaurant that’s open for some reason and drinking Scorpion Bowls and Tsing-Tsao.

Be safe, be sane, be thankful.

Published on November 15, 2017 at 9:35 pm

Contact Mikey: mlight@syr.edu