Seeing that turkeys were inexpensive, I decided to cook one for myself, mainly to see how it worked. I’m spending actual Thanksgiving with family — all I’m supposed to bring is pumpkin pie, which is easy because pumpkin pie is easy.
I picked up a 9-pound Butterball at the Culver City Albertson’s, along with some other things. I’m an impulse food shopper.
Then I went back four days before Thanksgiving for pie ingredients. They didn’t have canned pumpkin. Albertson’s, four days before Thanksgiving, was out of canned pumpkin. The stock person tracked me down later with a can of instant pumpkin mix — I may be lazy, but I mix my own spices and I can break an egg. The self-checkout was a disaster: “Item placed in checkout area is incorrect. Please remove.” A package of fresh thyme with a perfectly good barcode required a manager override. My bag of finished groceries triggered an error when I moved it to the floor. I nearly walked away and left everything. When I finally got out, I spent ten minutes corralling abandoned carts in the parking lot.
The turkey came out beautifully. Stuffed it with orange peels, onions, thyme, and rosemary; slathered in Crisco to keep the skin from burning; 325° for about four hours. Gravy from the neck and giblets — simmering the giblets, muttering to myself the whole time. When it came out I slurped up the drippings, combined with flour and reserved stock, whisked out the lumps, boiled till thick.
B on the turkey. I didn’t slice it well. C- on the stuffing — dried out. Solid A on the gravy. Once I got the stuffing reheated and slathered with the gravy, I upgraded it to B+.
My cooking secret, which I’ll share here: clean dishes and re-use them as you go. Left with almost nothing to wash at the end.
Total cost: about $25. Enough to feed three hungry people, or just me with snacks for a week.