Remember That One Turkey?

Sugar Daddy kind of dropped the ball on our Thanksgiving dinner. After being asked by moi several times to go and pick up a turkey, he "forgot", and Sunday morning decided he could just run to Jewel and pick up a fresh one. Ha! Yeah, I knew it. I fully expected him to return empty handed, or at the very least, with a rotisserie chicken. But he went all out and purchased this here beauty. A fully cooked, yes you read that right, fully cooked, whole turkey. Vacuum sealed for freshness, and caramel color added for appeal. Mmm, caramel color, my fave.

So here we have the beginning product. Yes, it's a Butterball. That was my only hope of it turning out half decent, I've always had good luck with a Butterball.



Here it is in all of it's bagged glory. Why a bag you ask? I really don't know, except for that is how my mom always did hers, so that's how I do mine. No basting, it always turns out juicy, and it's just the way it is. Obviously I need to spring for the bigger roasting pan, as my scale of turkey to pan is a little off.



Here you see the temperature set at 320. The instructions say 350, but my oven is a total over achiever, and likes to cook a little hotter than it should. So I have to compensate. And you also see the timer set at 1 hour and 46 minutes. It should be 1 hour and 45 minutes, but I overshot it a little. I usually do this when I top off my gas tank too. I always get that 1 penny over. Dang penny. Also, I apparently have no use for that "Auto Clean" button. For I have never to this day cleaned any oven I have owned. Perhaps I should.



And here is the lovely finished product. Looks okay, right? The caramel color seems to have done a nice enough job. The juices were flowing, and the meat was tasty. I can honestly say I was pleasantly surprised. Like so pleasantly surprised, that I'm thinking about going and buying another one to freeze and keep on hand just in case. For .89 a pound, it's not a bad deal. And considering that we've eaten turkey in some form or another for 3 days now, it's pretty economical.

So even though Sugar Daddy had to change up our routine, he proved me wrong, as usual, and came out on top. It ended up being a nice, simple, fairly easy meal to cook, and I was happy to be all together as a family again. Thanksgiving just isn't the same without Sean around. Nothing is.