Talking Turkey

I know we're just about 3 weeks out, but my mind is already fixated on Thanksgiving. And more particularly...what I will fix for Thanksgiving. This is, actually, purposeful.

For the past 4 years, I've had a ball making the Thanksgiving menu offered by Gourmet magazine. Sometimes the dishes are a little odd, but they're usually tasty and the only problem we encounter is that even with the six of us (me & Tim, sister & brother-in-law, and my folks) we end up with enough food left over to feed the six of us quite well for roughly the next two weeks. So this year, I started gearing up for that again when I got my issue of Gourmet in the mail. And then I read the menu.

And went right back to the drawing board. This year, it's just looking a little too weird. So, I am going to just fall back to the "traditional" Thanksgiving meal this year. And, in the spirit of still be excited about the event (and desperately wanting to avoid what has happened the last two years), I purchased our turkey yesterday when I was shopping.

Now, I was a little taken aback when I saw that turkeys, both fresh and frozen, are already out and happily discounted for your Thanksgiving pleasure. But then I did a little mental calculating and figured, ok, not so out of line. And for the last two years, I have been one of the schmoes in the store at 8pm on Wednesday night before Thanksgiving trying to find a turkey that isn't either so tiny as to more aptly resemble a quail or so large that it used to be a lineman on your favorite football team. So, I quickly squashed the feelings that it was just too soon to purchase the bird and began looking for our feast.

And waded through cases full of turkeys that would either be more aptly labeled quail or were so huge that they used to be linemen on your favorite football team. It seems it hasn't been the issue of my last minute turkey shopping that has been plaguing me, it's the fact that I would prefer to find a 12 pound turkey. Apparently 12 pound turkeys are mythical creatures. I guess it's either that:
1) Everyone wants a 12 pound turkey so they are all gone within two minutes of being put out
2) Turkeys don't actually ever stop at the 12 pound mark, they jump straight from 8 pounds to 22 pounds so quickly that it's nearly impossible to kill them at the 12 pound level, or
3) I can't read turkey labels properly

I include the third option only because it seemed like I should have three options.

I'm guessing it's probably the first, but come on people, there are THREE weeks left. Why must you all purchase your turkeys so early that even when I'm three weeks ahead I'm still left picking through the left over carcasses?! This is just not right.

So, despite my best intentions, I have still managed to come late to the party. However, on the positive side, with a little more advanced planning, perhaps I can at least avoid being one of the losers, er, procrastinators, in Safeway on Wednesday night fruitlessly picking over the inevitably empty shelves for cranberry jelly, packages of cranberries or even stuffing (last year they were out of stuffing...how do you run out of stuffing!?) But, well, realistically? It's kind of become just another part of the tradition.