The drain in my kitchen sink got stopped up while my wife and mother in law were cooking Thanksgiving dinner. I spent that evening, all day Friday, and three hours Saturday morning restoring all the plumbing to a working condition.

Drains matter.

I hope you all had a better Thanksgiving than that .

Also, never let anyone put aluminum foil down a garbage disposal.

Ouch - my sympathies. Thought we had a similar holiday snafu when we woke up Wednesday to no hot water. It seems the pilot had gone out for no known reason, so crisis averted. Why is it though that things like heat and electric and plumbing go out right around major holidays...

Fwiw you might consider pulling the garbage disposal out and instead recycling or composting your food waste. Dale our friendly plumber describes garbage disposals as his kids' college fund. Many municipalities pick up for you or its easy to get started with a backyard system. When you recycle folks learn not to put stuff down drains. About the only stuff that goes down our drain these days are coffee grounds rinsed from the filter, the main part of which are also recycled. And we pour grease from pans onto the food being recycled rather than down the drain. Easier on the waste water treatment as well.

There was a news radio report I heard yesterday that local plumbing companies see a double digit % increase in calls the day or two after Thanksgiving. You were not alone.

Forty years ago, when I was in high school, there was a funny story in Reader's Digest, or somesuch: some students had been told to ask their grandparents about the "best advancement in the kitchen" since they were young...one grandmother responded: "running water."
I thought that was a hoot, until I had the "opportunity" to live in a hut, and decided to put "running water" into the kitchen, by running a water line from a stream, down to the cabin, so that I'd have continuously running, COLD water. It took the better part of a week to get used to the sound...until then, the outhouse got lots of use.
We have lots to be thankful for.

My beloved bride has rather firmly suggested that I make it plain to all and sundry that she, in fact, was not the one who sent the aluminum foil down the disposal.

In the last couple of days I've learned a lot about disposals and we'll be sending a lot less down it than we have in the past.

I loathe garbage disposals- more trouble than they're worth. As you discovered, a jammed disposal is a lot bigger deal than a regular clogged sink.

It would have been more expensive but less time consuming if the problem had been in the disposal. No, the clog was at the end of a 25' snake.

It looked like this:

1) disassemble P-trap
2) send snake down drain pipe, maneuvering snake tortuously through several bends
3) find clog and work snake
4) withdraw snake and remove nasty stuff from auger
5) return to step (2) until can't pull more clog out, typically three repetitions
6) reassemble p-trap
7) send water down drain and wait for disposal and sink to fill
8) observe and discuss with daughter how fast or slow the water drains
9) return to step (1) -- probably a total of 25 times altogether

Add to that misidentifying the drain pipe downstream, cutting the misidentified pipe, rodding the misidentified pipe, and sweating on a $30(!) tee to make a cleanout where one was not needed. Not to mention repaying a gigantic favor to my friend who did the cutting and the sweating.

Looking on the bright side, that cleanout may come in handy one day. I now know for sure where all the pipes are in my house. I learned enough about sweating copper pipe that I could do it myself next time, I think. Middle Daughter volunteered a lot of her time to hang out with me and learn about plumbing. The friend who helped me is getting a free pistol class with me. And, of course, from now on when we go around the table at Thanksgiving to talk about what we're thankful for, I will always have something at too of mind to say.