Grown Ass Dads Episode 13: Thanksgiving Chaos, Cranberry Wars & Keeping Family Traditions Alive

This episode is all about the holidays – the good, the chaotic, and the strangely meaningful.

The guys swap stories about massive Thanksgiving gatherings with 60–90 relatives, family football games that ended in actual injuries, and the logistical nightmare of trying to hit four houses in one day before finally learning to split holidays across different dates. 

They talk favorite plates (smoked turkey, homemade sides, jello crunch) and the dishes that should probably be banned forever (cranberry sauce catches a lot of heat). One dad shares his longtime tradition of playing Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant every Thanksgiving morning – a tradition his kids hate now but he secretly hopes they carry on one day.

Underneath the jokes and food takes, they get real about something deeper:
What happens when big family holidays start shifting down a generation, and how do you help your kids value cousins, extended family, and shared traditions in a world that’s constantly pulling everyone apart? 

If you’ve ever wrestled with holiday logistics, loud relatives, or the fear that your favorite traditions might fade out, this one will feel very familiar.

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Grown Ass Dads podcast. Boop boop boop boop boop boop boop. All right, you know, that means welcome, bones. Glad to see you again. Let's make it be here. Welcome. You are watching the Grown ass Dads podcast. I'm Adam Bundchen, I am Jay Hill's tour. This guy here is Jason Byrne. Nice to see you again. So tis the season. Oh, baby, is it? It's starting to get chilly out, which I love. It is Thanksgiving time. Yep. Depending on when this episode pumps out. As of now, we're a few days away from Christmas. Our Christmas. Thanksgiving? Yep. So we thought it'd be fun to talk about Thanksgiving. Yeah. All things Thanksgiving. Yep. I, I will commit to putting this out before Thanksgiving happens, bro. Like. Well, it depends. What time is it? This is what time. What time on that Thursday is officially Thanksgiving podcast drops on Thanksgiving Day or the or the hot topic. Yeah. You think that's what's doing? You think people hate their families that much? They're like, man, I can. That's a hell of a tradition. You know, we do. Every Thanksgiving morning, we watch the grown ass dads pie. Great. I gather the kids around, I, I don't know why that wouldn't be your routine, because it's not a bad routine. And we are so family friendly. Oh, boy. I mean, mostly family friendly. That's a reminder for me to watch my. Watch my lip. Nah, fuck that. So happy Thanksgiving to our listeners, to our our our viewers, our followers and friends and obviously our family. Let's start with some easy stuff. Some softballs. Softballs I like softballs. Do you have any Thanksgiving traditions? Whether it's food schedule, anything at all that you that you have to do on Thanksgiving? We used to, for a really long time. We had a, we had a football game. We had a family football game every Thanksgiving morning. When you say we. Is that like siblings and cousins and so. Oh my. Well so yeah. So let so I'll, I'll start with that situation. I have, two fairly sizable family. So my Hillsong side of the family there are, between grandparents that have just past aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins, cousins with children. We are about 65, 66 strong that Hillsong Thanksgiving the turn back Thanksgiving. My mom's side of the family where we're sitting right around 96 people. Holy moly. And, so we do, I guess the first, first one, that is actually the most brilliant thing that I have ever done in my entire life. When I first got married, I set up a situation to where it was a humongous pain in the ass because I got married, which meant I had another family that I had to participate in. And that family had two sides of the faith, right? And my side of the family. So for our first few, like Thanksgivings and Christmas is we were at four fucking places on Thanksgiving and we're at four fucking places on Christmas or Christmas Eve or whatever. And we spent all of our fucking time driving, running around, driving. Hi, everybody. Great to see you. We got about two hours and we're going to. So what I ended up doing is setting up, one side of my family we celebrate on Thanksgiving. The other side of the family celebrates Thanksgiving the Saturday after. And then we have one side of my family that celebrates Christmas Eve. And the other side of my family is Christmas Day. And so we were able to chop that up, maneuvered around the, in-laws, family. And and it made it way, way, way better. Yeah. So, but we we have a big family. Everybody gets along for the most part. Lots of fun. There's there's the pains in the asses that that exist in every single family. It's pretty normal. But we all get along really well. And so, you know, at its peak hour football game on Thanksgiving Day was a ten on ten. No holds barred, played for two hours, kept score. Two people go to the hospital sometimes. Sometimes. Dad, did my uncle, drill my, one of my cousin's girlfriends in the face with the football, and she goes, yes, that did happen. Has there been a torn ACL? 100%. But we played football. Everybody went home, caught a shower, and then we did,

Thanksgiving starting around 5: 5:08

00. The whole kit and caboodle of of all the stuff. And, and then we always played games later on that evening. And typically in the Hilton family, you would play boys versus girls. There was a lot of ego and shit talking that would go on, and we had a really good time with it. And then we got old and we all had kids, and then the games were a little more family friendly and goldfish shit talking and whatever, but, we have a really good time, I enjoy it, I enjoy Thanksgiving, Christmas very, very much. Other people find it to be very stressful because there's so many people and there's so many people to talk to and all I like it. I get out of it and I'm I'm 100% on board. But there's no, like, real traditions. There's no, like, ugly sweater. There's no it's I mean, those are traditions. I think those are all fair game. So but yeah, that's, that's that's the action. All right. Jay, what about you? Well, I want to ask a question based upon Jay's answer. So you've got a giant family on both sides, right? Your mom's side. Your dad's side. I got a big family on both sides as well. Like my, Well, not quite the size of yours. I'm going to throw out random number because I'm not thinking. But my my, my dad's got call it 6 or 7 siblings. My mom's got 4 or 5 siblings. So there's they're the families are big. My question and what I'm wondering is, at what point in time does the holiday tradition, whether it's Thanksgiving or it is Christmas, at what point in time does it trend down to the next generation? So right now you're hanging out with your extended family? Yeah. Based upon your mom and your dad, at what point in time does the tradition come down a generation? And then all of a sudden, you or your sisters or you or your brother are hosting the the, the, the, the family Thanksgiving or the family Christmas or whatever. And. Yeah. Well, I'd like to I'd like to really thank you for bringing up a really difficult pain in the ass fuck you topic. Because we're fighting it, right now and for the last probably four years, and my, my siblings, my three sisters would like to move it to where it's just my parents, us, our kids. I understand the ease of use. I understand the more calm. Instead of having 65 people or 95 people there that you only have 16 or 18. I fucking hate it. I don't, I, I don't hate it because I hate my siblings. I hate it because I don't get to see my cousins and the people that I grew up with and have been really close to very often. So I look forward to doing that. And so as far as I'm concerned, I don't ever want to change getting together with my extended family for the holidays. I'm very I would like to host and as of right now, my aunts and my mom are still holding on to that and controlling that situation. Just like you say. Where does it host it at? Is it at your your parents house? So my parents have Christmas Eve every year, and my aunt and uncle Bob have, Thanksgiving every year. Okay. And so the house fits the people. It can get tired at times, but it still works. But it's. I want to do it forever because I enjoy that. Not everybody enjoys that. But my siblings and I are in, a minor battle royal because a few years ago, before I got divorced, they they forced the issue and they said, we're not we're not doing the big thing on Christmas. Christmas Eve is is here at my sister Kristina's. And we're just doing it just our family and I said, all right, cool. We can do that. I don't want to fight you on any more. And they're like, oh, you're good with it. I said, I'm totally good with it. And they're like, okay, cool. And then I went to the extended family Christmas Eve and took my kids, and we went there for a few hours and we came back and they're like, you're such a fucking asshole. I go, I, I don't really think that I'm an asshole. This is what I wanted to do. You guys chose that. That's what you wanted to do. And it was cool for you to tell me what to do. But I didn't tell you what to do. I said, cool, go do what you want to do. I'm going to go over here for a little while and see the people that I want to see, and they're like, well, that's a fucking dickhead move. And I go, okay, that's fine. But I it's not, it's it's difficult when there are a lot of chiefs in the wigwam. Yeah. And, so while I do think you're an asshole. Sure. I don't think you're an asshole for that. Okay, well, I mean, there's plenty of other stuff in Marshall, but. But stay tuned. It's, But it's it's it's hard. I get it. You either enjoy it or you don't. And if you don't enjoy it, that's totally fine. Yeah. I want to see you. But if you if you don't want to come hang out with everybody, that's that's no big deal. But don't ask me to not go hang out and tell me I'm a dick, because I chose to go see the people that I wanted to see, that I see twice a year. Yeah, I get it. So, yeah, I mean, it's it's a tough decision, right? So my mom has hosted Thanksgiving for years. My Aunt Karen did Christmas for years. I think my mom did Easter, pretty sure. But we've always asked that question. Right. Like at what point in time does this become our family instead of the extended Byrne family? Well, I'm curious, is that because you don't want to do the extended family thing, or is it because you would rather it be tighter and more control? I have no issues. I love my extended family. I love the Wilbur's family. I love the Byrne family, I love everybody, I love. That's not true, I love everybody. You don't like anybody, but I you're right, I hate everyone. But but the drama level and the stress level on my mother and my father particularly are higher. More so my mother than my father when that hosting is required. Well, sure. So which makes a ton of sense. Whoa whoa whoa. I completely believe what you're saying. Okay? If your mother did not host. Would she still be stressed? Like, if it was a different member of the family that was hosting it. Different member. They're different. She didn't. She didn't control it. Different, man. She wasn't stressed around Christmas because the Christmas was being hosted by my Aunt Karen. Okay. But she still hosted Thanksgiving and Easter and so on and so. And she probably wasn't even stressed. But there's just so much that goes into hosting because because our family, we had 20, 30, maybe 40 people there, right? So I'm looking at this going, I know this is great. It's awesome to see the family. The whole nine yards. But it's at some point in time I want the holidays to be about our closer family. Sure. Whether that's my side of the family or it's Hillary's side of the family, let's figure out when Thanksgiving and or Easter and or Christmas. When can it be about us and my kids, extended family, not my extended family. It's a hard decision, and I think I think you guys are one of us. I think I think he got a while. Okay, before that becomes a thing before. So for for for us, we I grew up, every Thanksgiving from the time I was zero until the time I was, I don't know, 16, 15, something like that. That might not even be accurate. It could be like 13. We went to Poconos, Arkansas. My dad's my dad's mom and dad lived in Pocahontas, Arkansas, and we would go down there and we would stay with them every single Thanksgiving and every single person that ever existed on my dad's side of the family went to Arkansas, and it was amazing. Like, I only saw my cousins from Arkansas on Thanksgiving once a year. I only saw my my cousins that lived in different cities and Kansas and Iowa and all over the country at Thanksgiving. Okay, no other time other than that. So I loved that. And then when my grandparents who hosted Thanksgiving, when they got sick, I want to say my grandfather passed away. And then, they got sick and they moved. They moved up here to be closer to my dad and his family and all that. And it stopped by necessity. Okay. And it was like Thanksgiving was never the same. Like we would go to my we would go to my uncle's for a little while, and then that kind of got fucked up. And then we would go to my aunt's and then that kind of got fucked up. My, my parents would host and then that didn't work out. And then the only like, steady that I've had in my adult life was I would go to my wife's mom's for Thanksgiving and that that's it. We I literally just had this conversation of tradition and like, passing it down. And when do we take it on and all that stuff with with my wife, my, my in-laws just celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. And it can be sometimes like pulling teeth to, like, ensure everybody's there and everybody is contributing and everybody's together. And my wife is like holding on to this, like, I want everybody there at all times and the, the, the reality of the situation. And it's not a bad thing. It's just a reality is that those kids who my nieces are, my nieces and nephews are getting older. Sure, some of them have kids, most of them have girlfriends or boyfriends or whatever the case may be. And I tried to say this somewhat delicately, and I know that it it landed, but I don't know if it really necessarily internalized yet. Is that your tight knit unit that your mom and dad, like created created five other tight knit units that are now starting to create their own family unit. And that's very difficult. Sure, for one of the other ones who aren't in a part of the other for to to to stomach. And so I think once the boys get a little bit older and they start bringing their significant others to holidays and they start, you know, well, it's getting pretty serious. And, you know, we're talking to my dad. I might pop whatever that, you know. Right. Whatever. Whenever those conversations start happening now, it's on you and Hilary to like, extend that legacy of tradition and all that stuff. And it's just it's difficult. Like, it's like I'm the baby, Sarah's the baby. So we are like the last, you know, cowboys in the, in the, you know, ring. And we're like, man, you know, like where do everybody go? And it's like, well, they're living their family unit and it's just different. So I have suggested for years does it matter to you or to you that you get together with your family on Thanksgiving Day or on Christmas Day? No. Yeah. What what's the definition of family, anyone? Your extended family, your cousins, your aunt, your uncles? We obviously care about our own children. In particular our parents, potentially our siblings. But, you know, just there's it is it is it does it have to be on the day or would you be willing to celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas? A weekend before or weekend after? Yeah. I don't, I don't I personally don't care. My brother lives in Omaha. My brother is my best friend, so I don't give a shit. When we celebrate the holidays. Like, for instance, this year, he's coming in on Friday with his family, and I'm hosting Friday at my house, you know, with with them and my dad. I don't care. I and and you know, not to like whatever dark clouded or anything but like the tradition on my side for me, like, kind of died when my mom died. Yeah. And I love my dad to death, but my dad's not going to, like, like, you know, create tradition or, you know, exacerbate tradition in a way that is, you know, wrangling of of cats. My mom would my mom would say at like Christmas Day. My mom had open house every single Christmas day for as long as I can remember. That's just what it was.

And it was from noon to 4: 19:19

00 am Christmas Day. But that was our tradition. And when that kind of went away, my dad still does Christmas Day. And, you know, he he does things. But my mom ensured that the whole family was there. I mean, that's what it was you. If you were a part of the abundance or the presents, you were at our house on Christmas. Yeah. Period. As far as traditions go, we don't do the obviously the Arkansas thing anymore. I have one fun tradition, on Thanksgiving. And, other than going to my in-laws, which is one of my favorite days because I get to cook and I get my my mother in law cooks, and she's a fantastic cook. And my, you know, my, my in-laws, the siblings all cook. And it's I, I enjoy those moments, greatly. Growing up as a kid, my dad used to play for me in my brother's, Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant on Thanksgiving. I legit have no idea what you're talking if you don't know the song Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie. It's. And I, I it's going to sound like I'm exaggerating, but I'm not. It's probably 18 minutes long. Oh, Lord. And it is a story that Arlo Guthrie tells me. It's 17 minutes longer than my attention span can handle. And we would listen. We would listen to it on Thanksgiving morning. Okay. While you know, the the moms were brining the turkey or getting the stuffing running or whatever, my dad would turn it on and he would listen to Alice's Restaurant and he would make, I don't know if make is probably the right word, but I listened, okay. And my boys listen to Alice's Restaurant every Thanksgiving morning when we're getting ready, we typically have like, I'll make a big breakfast on Thanksgiving and I turn on Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant, and the boys scatter like cockroaches, like, this instant. Dad, there's a long a song in the world is a stupid song. I love it, it makes me so happy to turn on, give, give, give me a little bit of context. Like. I mean, what what is this song about the song is about? Is it related to No Thanksgiving? And. No, I don't think so. I don't I, I honestly don't know if like there is some underlying attachment to the song and Thanksgiving. I don't know why my dad played it on Thanksgiving. He did, but it's just a memory that I have. So the song is about I mean, it's it's about fucking ridiculous thing in the world. The song is about a hippie who gets in trouble. Doesn't fit you at all, right? Not not in the least. He gets in trouble. He's a long haired hippie and he gets in trouble. Still does not right at all. And he is somewhat, strongly encouraged, forced to join the military during the Vietnam era. Okay. And it's about that. It's about that story. He gets in trouble and he has to go to the police station, and then he gets, you know, kind of. And you don't understand why or boys don't embrace this and why you play it. What is that? Guys, here's the deal. Listen to the song and you will. If you listen to this song, you will understand this 0% more. All right. Fantastic. You said it was two minutes long. I'm already out. I'm glad we got to that situation. And it makes me so happy. That's my Thanksgiving tradition is we. Listen, I love you for Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie every Thanksgiving. Sorry about that, boys. We, we we are a little dehydrated, and we got a pretty rough little, leg cramp Charlie horse there. No. You're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jake. Jake disappeared. The the majority didn't notice because I ate it. Videos. Yeah. All right, you do the right thing. You pretty much didn't disappear. All right, so let's get down to brass tacks here. Oh, I hope you're going. Well, I think you're going. What is Thanksgiving really about? That's pretty lame. I didn't think you're going there. Well, we're going to talk about cooking. For me, this Thanksgiving is about turkey. This is what I'm saying. And what are we and what are we eating? I like to give thanks before I eat. For sure. Thank God for all of my blessings and all the people standing around me. What do we eat? So I'm going to ask you, okay, so as to what kind of is what you were thinking? What does that plate look like on Thanksgiving in an ideal world? And is there anything that is a completely off limits? We'll never touch your plate situation? No. I'll eat everything on Thanksgiving. Like, because it's pretty much the same stuff, right? It's traditional Thanksgiving food. My wife makes a bacon and green Brussels sprout casserole. That is insane. Even though I want to vomit, I'm sure it's delicious. It's insane. Sounds delicious. Not Thanksgiving, but go on. I typically smoke a turkey at a boy. And my my mother in law will bake a turkey. My brother in law, Brian will will smoke a turkey or, do some version of a turkey also. And it's always fantastic. The sides is where I eat, where I really thrive. Okay. Love me. So our cousin Heather, or my, my sister in law Alice will make, mac and cheese. That is, like, very, traditional. Not. It's not like elbow mac. It's like penny pasta with with, like, a thick, creamy mac and cheese. Penny with an eye. Sure. All right. Penny might as well say Penny. Penny, I'm from South City. What are used to penny pasta? They used to have a pasta house. Just say it. Right. Penny. And I love me some green bean casserole. I love me. My mom used to make the best sweet potato casserole in the world. It was unbelievable. I remember my one of my bean casserole or sweet potato? Sweet potato. All right. You said green bean. Well, I like green bean casserole. It was green. It was green bean. Before that, green beans. And then you said your mom. Yeah. And then I got thought. I like the word casserole. Brought me into that. You know, I had this cousin, in Arkansas that made ambrosia salad. Not familiar. It's like a mixture, and I'm probably going to butcher it. It's like a mixture of, cranberry preserves when it's Marsala. Describe a salad. I'm probably not eating. It's marshmallows. It's not a salad, but it's called the ambrosia salad. And it's like, super fluffy and creamy, but also tart. And it was like, if you. I mean, you guys don't fucking eat the stuff on Thanksgiving. What do you guys eat? I don't know what you're talking rolls in Turkey. What are you what are you doing? Because I got it. I know the answer. I mean, we so. Oh, God. Party potatoes. Party potatoes are are very popular for people other than me. No. My plate, they make all kinds of stuff, but my plate is just dark meat turkey. Because white meat turkey is dry as shit. You're eating the wrong turkey, brother. No, no I'm not. White chicken is dry as shit. I need dark, everything dark. I got so many different. It's so many things cooking for me. That's so many jokes. I don't care who cooks it. It needs to be dark meat. Jason's cooking turkeys until the fire alarm goes off. Then that. Actually, I've. I've introduced stuffing in the last handful of years. You don't say. Which is actually freaking fantastic. My mom does not make, stove top. Or at least she makes her stuffing from scratch. So do that. And then we do the mashed potatoes. I don't put the gravy because I hate gravy, so I'll eat mashed potatoes by themselves. Now, I'll spring a little bit of gravy on there just for a little bit of flavor. But I don't like gravy very much. Okay. We do also have mac and cheese because that's the only thing one of my sons will eat. But ours is traditional, like Kraft Deluxe or whatever the hell it is deluxe, though, we'll have all the offerings like the green bean casserole and party potatoes and all that, but I just I can't do it. Just doesn't do much green. Yeah. No. If it if it's healthy turkey healthy for the most part not fried turkey if it is in any way related to a vegetable, I pretty much don't touch it. So is what is. So our Thanksgiving has it's it's staples like if if someone doesn't bring their particular dish that has been coming for years same someone's going to write it. Yeah. So I will smoke a turkey. My uncle Bob will bake a turkey. With the amount of people that we have, we typically have like 3 or 4 turkey. So we're going to need we do a mashed potato. My Aunt Donna will do a mashed potato that again we're talking about 15 to 20 pounds of potatoes. Yeah. Of that of mash. That of mashed potato. My Donna makes, a homemade gravy that it, it has some of, like, the turkey juices and different stuff in it that is lights out and also does a stuffing. Very, very good. McConnell make this like Italian salad that's got a little bit of a different flavor to it than what your traditional like ranch or broccoli salad that would be in there. We have something that is a staple that people really freak out about because they believe this is a dessert course. This is a main course. So have you ever had jello crunch? Jello crunch? I can't say I'm going to say no. All right. The the walk with me here. This is you take pretzels. So like rolled ball pretzels. You smash up a bag of Rold Gold pretzels. Okay. You then mix them with two full sticks of butter. And you I get so far, put them in the bottom of a Pyrex like rectangular dish. On top of that goes a, like strawberry jello. And then it has a layer of whipped cream and then cut up strawberries on it. I don't know who at what point in time during my 45 year lifespan, decided this is part of dinner, but it's fucking awesome. I'm pretty sure it was one of the original pilgrims. And so John Smith, his name was so my mom. My mom will make jello crunch every year that goes in there. My Connie will make a, like a, a green bean. It's on a green bean casserole. It's like fresh green beans with bacon and and cheese and different stuff. That's great. Will have your traditional rolls, bread, what have you. And then we'll have some corn of some sort, some sort of corn dish that will be there. And and then the problem for me that never, ever touches my plate because it's, I know, I know where this is going. Pilled terrible garbage cranberry. Okay. So that that's that's where that's where I want to go really quickly. Cranberry I like I know, I want, I want to have this conversation really quickly because there is always something that has to go away like has has no business. So my vote and I now know that two of the three of us are on the same page, like cranberry can absolutely go to hell. Well, here's the problem I don't. Your vote doesn't count because you don't eat anything that's healthy. This is true, but cranberry sauce and cranberries can go fly a kite. We can throw that shit on the floor I like, I would eat cranberry before I would eat green beans, but oh my God, all of it needs friends. All of it needs to go to hell because it tastes like shit. Your palate is the palate of a 11 year old child, and it's gotten very much more robust over the last 20 years. It absolutely. So what did you eat when you and Hillary first got married on Thanksgiving? Did you eat dino chicken nuggets and Kraft mac and cheese? No, because we were still going to my parents and the extended family, and I would put a little bit of turkey on there, choke down the dark meat. Yes, yes he does. Yes. Well played. And then I would be done and we would probably swing through McDonald's on the way home. This is the oh my word. Yep. So my mother in law also makes a cranberry salad or like a cranberry, dish. That is fantastic. It's not like slide out of the canned cranberry jello does. It is phenomenal. But while you were talking, I got really excited. My sister in law, Liz, makes, like, an orange, brownie dream single brownie thing. That's phenomenal. Yeah. God, I'm so excited about swimming, and I'm. No. Hold on. Let me ask you this real quick. What, do you cook something and bring it? Yeah. You said you smoke a turkey, so I smoke a turkey, so I always I'll smoke a turkey, and I bring and I bring booze because I drink. Do you cook anything for the holidays? So we've shifted. So we are past that point that we talked about earlier. It is now moved to be our families. Yeah. So it's me and my family, my brother and his family and my parents. But then we also have Hillary's parents, her brother and his family. Yeah. So we'll do a Thanksgiving dinner with, Hillary's family leading up to Thanksgiving. So we're going down there the Monday to Wednesday leading up to Thanksgiving. And then on actual Thanksgiving, we will end up over at my brother's house. He bakes a turkey, does the whole spread. My mom brings a whole bunch of stuff over. We could either we could we could choose I could I could just go over there and eat everybody else's shit or my brother has asked me. He goes, listen, I know you like smoked turkey. I am not doing a smoked turkey. Would you like to smoke a turkey? I'm like, I'll let you know. The day before. That's helpful. You're disaster. If I was your brother, I'd punch you right in the mouth. I but but I, I don't want to right now. I might then I have no idea. I don't I don't want to commit to it. I love you, Adam. When you when you listen to this episode, I will punch your brother in the face for you. Because that's absurd. I mean, not me. You got a point at him. You got to plan at some point, like I love. Hey, do you know, never change how long it takes a turkey to defrost. He will have plenty of turkey for our entire group. And it also sounds like the way he smokes turkey. It's going to be dry anyways. Yeah, true, but I. Why why why would you say it's like I smoked a turkey two years ago? I didn't smoke a turkey last year. Every day I just smoked a turkey two years ago and it was just dynamite. What do you do? What are you doing with your turkey this year? I do, so I'll do, like a 20 pound turkey. I don't do anything. You do a wet brine, dry brine? Wet brine. I'll brine it overnight, and then, I will fill it with various fruits. Fruits. Because you take, you would like, you are kind of a fruity. Did take like some, some oranges, some strawberries, some, lemon. My stuff that has a lot of juice to it. And you stuff the cavity with it because you know, you know, yellow, you know, I'll show you all those things that we're gonna put in there that we're not going to taste anyway, but it's going to look fancy on my grill. One. Yes, it looks fucking cool, but two, one of the issues that turkeys have with drying out is because of that giant open cavity that is their butthole and say to the butthole, you have a situation where that heat transfers through there and it creates. So you can very, very easy end up with a Cousin Eddie turkey from Christmas. And everybody knows the best way to close a butthole is with strawberries. Sure. I'm not going to have this conversation. I don't I don't know what that's saying. Is the fruit is solely to keep moisture inside of the center of the tree. I'll allow it. I'm not saying, oh, my turkey tastes like oranges. No it doesn't. It's literally to keep the moisture inside of that. Okay, instead of that turkey, I avoid that by injecting the entire turkey with butter. So I just butter. Yeah, I take Cajun butter. I don't remember the brand name, but I learned that from my days with Smoking brothers. So I and I take an entire thing of this Cajun butter. And that's actually a measurement now. Yeah. The entire the entire thing. An entire thing. Simple. The whole syringe back and I go around and I inject all the different areas with this until it squirts out. And it was full. Right? Okay. If it squirts out, it's full. What happens in life? No one. And it squirts out and it is it's fantastic. Well, Okay. We we everybody bring something. I mean, with a family my size, it I mean, to cook or to host and to do all of it for 65 people. I'm putting thousands of dollars. Booze for sure. Food apps, the whole nine yards. So everybody, you know, everybody, each family, each of my cousins, each of my, you know. Oh, sure. Bring something. And my aunt doles it out. Hey, do this, do this, do this, and it's, we got this thing pretty much on lock right now. It's it's pretty consistent. And, my cousin Jackie brings a taco dip that is phenomenal. That it. If she doesn't bring it. Hey, Jackie. Thank you for bringing something that's delicious. Riot. Really? But but. Yeah, it's. I love it. I'm super pumped about the holidays. I know there's a lot of people that are, you know. Ebenezer Scrooge about the shit. And they got to do this, and they got to do that. I just want to chill and and and I get that. I, I take days of fucking nothing. But every year around Christmas, I take the whole week in between Christmas and New Year's off, and people are like, oh, you do a bunch of shit, get a bunch of stuff done around the house. No, I do fucking nothing because my year so fucking crazy. I take a week of a mental break of just doing whatever sounds fun in the moment, and then we get back at it after the after the New Year. Let me, before we wrap up, let me ask this question of you, man. So it sounds like we have whether it's a hard nosed tradition like Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant or its familial traditions around locations and food and things like that, it sounds like we have things that we do that we care about. Okay, how and maybe you haven't thought about this. Maybe this is a good thing to think about. I don't know if I've thought about this. How do we instill the desire for tradition into our kids? Because our kids are a different generation than we are, and I, I like tradition, I do like tradition. I like the, the Arlo Guthrie thing. I like going to my in-laws. I like one of my families. You know, my cousin Zach has a, Christmas party every year, and I love it. I like tradition, my wife loves tradition. And one of the fears that I have as my kids get older is probably the same fear that our parents had. My parents had. We're going to get up and not we're going to grow up and we're not going to give a shit and we're not going to, you know, see anybody. We don't care about the cousins, we don't care about our siblings, and we're just going to live our lives. Have you thought have you guys thought about that? Have you thought about how your kids are going to view what you're doing now as a tradition? Like, I somewhat laugh at me and I'm like, I fucking listen to Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant almost every day. It's the most ridiculous thing in the world. And I'm, by the way, and I drink a white Russian. I'm the only one. Do the worst part. I'm the only one listening to the song. My wife thinks I'm insane, right? My kids think it's ridiculous. Checks out. And I would love one day for one of my kids to call me in 20 years and say, you know what I'm doing with my kids right now? On Thanksgiving morning, I'm listening to that stupid fucking song, and I don't know why that's important. Yeah, but it's something. Okay. I, I like tradition to an extent. I'm not super bent out of shape. If the tradition gets bucked, the only thing that I try to instill or that would really bum me out, is if my kids didn't enjoy spending time with their cousins and their extended family because my extended family is so important to me, and I have such an unbelievable support system of like, I, I could call legitimately 30 people right now

that are in my family at 9: 42:14

00 at night, say, hey, I need help with this right now. And there is no doubt in my mind all 30 of them would show up at my house. And that's a rare fucking thing, brother. And that's because of the relationship that I have built. And now I may only see them 2 or 3 times a year, but it's real and so life can be very difficult and at times you need you need people. And if you don't create those relationships, that shit goes away real fucking fast. And the amount of people that I know that I get called by when shit gets sideways, that I'm their first call weirds me out because I'm like, go, excuse me. I'm. I'm the dude. I'm the guy. Like, legitimately, you're not even in the top 50 of people I would call if I was in real shit, but that's the reality. And so I the only thing in that world that I would be disappointed in is if they didn't appreciate the family that they have, because our family is awesome and that's great. We are super tight and that would be the only thing. Tradition. They want change. They don't want to do jello crunch. They don't want to, you know, play football on fucking Thanksgiving. The first fucking year. There's no jello crunch. You're going to burn it down. Oh I'll probably go get all the boosters. The pretzels. Yeah. Oh I'll go I'll go get the necessary ingredients from a Walgreens and make it right on the fucking spot. But ultimately, that's it. That's that's the only thing that would bother. All right. But you. Jason, I never thought about it. I don't know what my answer is, because, while we have our traditions, regardless of what the holiday is, I've been surprised at how reactive my kids are when something changes. What do you mean? So I, I, I cannot think of a specific example right now, but I remember at some point in time we did something different and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, like whoa with this is not how it goes. I'm like, what are you talking about? You guys care about this, but I, I didn't it did not register for me. Yeah. So I, I, I don't know what to answer for this question because I really don't know. We'll, we'll we'll see what those traditions are and hopefully we hang on to them. Well, I'll tell you what. You'll probably find out as the years go on and things tweak and change a little bit and they get a little bit older, they're gonna be like, wait a minute, why are we not going to Uncle Adams? Or why are we why where's why is grandma not bringing the thing? Or you know, why is Arlo Guthrie not playing today? I'm going to hit you with one thing, because this is not revolving around Thanksgiving. Do you have just to end with in tradition world, what's the weirdest tradition that you have had over your throughout your life? Is it Arlo Guthrie? Dude, it's fucking that's a fucking weird one. Okay. That is a very weird tradition. That I think that I think we have, there that I have, I don't know if my kids love it. Man. Weird traditions. That's a whole nother. It's fucking weird, man, I think so. I think one of the other things that that is, is somewhat odd. And maybe other people did it, but we would always open one present on Christmas Eve. Okay. Like, you know. Yes, I like it as a kid. My kids don't do that. Santa's come early. Well, not a saint. No, no, not, not a Santa present, a family present. Oh. So it'd be like. All right, can we open something? And my mom would always say, no, no, no, until it was, like, 10:00 at night on Christmas Eve. All right. We're going to do we're going to do a Christmas show at some point in time because we got a lot of stuff around that. Do you have any weird traditions at all? Like it could be a super obscure I dude, I, I, I have no idea what to respond with here. I was going to go out on the exact same path as you was with some of those Christmas and. Yeah, but I, I don't know. So the reason you guys should start listening to Arlo Guthrie. Listen, it's a great song. Listen to it on the way home that you'd have to drive around the block here. Here's why. This question, here's why this question popped into my head. Because you said, I hope that in 20 years from now, my kid calls me and says, guess one listens. Yeah, for my whole life. So we did wrote. So there's six in my family and my parents and four kids. We road trip. We never flew anywhere. If we were going to Denver to the mountains, we were driving 16 hours. If we're going to Tampa, Florida, we're driving 16 hours. That's what it was. I don't know how it started. I don't know why we would leave the driveway. And everybody's geeked because we're going on vacation and my dad would play a song called The Heart of Rock and Roll by Huey Lewis familiar and. And the news and the news. Don't forget about the news. Right. But they. And we would be bouncing off of the walls in the conversion van with the VHS player and the seven inch TV screen. And about 15 years to, so, 13 years ago, we went on the first vacation, with my parents, and I had a kid, and my kid was a baby, and my parents were riding in our minivan, and I picked them up. And when we pulled out of the driveway, I put on the heart of rock and roll. And legitimately, I thought my dad was going to come apart at the seams like I didn't know if he was going to cry, jump out of the car. But I like he she freaked out. Yeah. She's like, this is this is the greatest thing. This is life. We made it. And so I, I thought of that when you're like, I hope that happens. Yeah, man. You know something that just is a weird thing that's got a great just feeling to it that you're like, okay, I want to, I want, I want that to get passed down some way somehow. Yeah. And again, great jam. There's no reason for it. We're getting all hyped up to sit in the car for 16 hours. But it was it had a good, good, really, really fun memories as a kid and then being an adult. Yeah, I like that. Okay. This was the show. This was the Thanksgiving show. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. If you're watching on YouTube, please subscribe to the channel. Like this episode? Comment. Leave a comment. Go to, grown ass dads.com. You can find us on Apple Podcasts. You can find us on Spotify. All the normal places that you can find this type of media. I'm on record. If you eat canned cranberries at Thanksgiving, you're probably a communist. Okay, that's an address. I would argue that if you eat cranberries, period, you might be economist. I don't, I don't, well, here's the problem. You guys are going to be really disappointed with the amount of people that eat cranberries. That's fine. There's a lot there. There's a lot of fucking psychopaths. A lot of communists. Right? I don't want to tell you. Thank you for watching. We appreciate you all. Love you buddy. Peace. Love you all to you. Great stuff. Just just for the record, we've been sold out of of, merch for a while, but we are back in stock, so get out to us dads.com. Place your orders. It's all good. So grown ass dads out. Peace to you.