My sister gave me a challenge last week. She said she wished I had a turkey for a Thanksgiving card.

Well I do have a turkey picture but I decided I wanted to be a bit more ambitious. I decided I wanted to have a picture of a Thanksgiving table all decked out with food and candles and wine glasses.

I have a table. That’s the easy part. I have wine glasses and nice china. So now I need the food. The biggest  food item is, of course , the centerpiece of the meal, the turkey.

Now since I plan to eat the props I want to be sure the turkey comes out nice and golden brown and doesn’t just look good, but also tastes good. I usually cook a mean turkey..nice and brown and very moist…perfect…except the last 2 turkey’s I cooked didn’t cook evenly. I think my old oven is nearing the end of its days.

I wanted to get the best price I could so I went to Walmart and bought a frozen turkey. Usually I buy fresh but this isn’t really Thanksgiving Dinner..it’s just a “fake” one. 🙂 So frozen will do. I had a gift card too.  Gift cards are like shopping with someone else’s money so I become more free with my $$$.

Next to the frozen turkeys was an electric Turkey roaster. If I hadn’t had the gift card I wouldn’t have even considered it but now I thought..could this solve my old oven problem?

Into the cart it went.

At home I unpacked it, wiped it down as instructed and marveled at how big this thing was.

Mr. Turkey was in the bottom of the refrigerator defrosting. 3 1/2 days later the turkey was thawed and it was time to try out this new gadget.

The turkey was a small one. 13.5 lbs. and the chart said to allow 15 minutes per pound. That works out to 3.87 hours so in goes the turkey and I settled down to wait. Smells good!

Too bad you can’t scratch and sniff.

Times up. I lifted the lid and there was a beautiful golden brown bird except it’s drumsticks were sagging away from the body and when I lifted the bird the wings fell off!

Boy this turkey is definitely cooked! As I transferred the main body to the serving platter the whole thing collapsed. If anything this turkey is overcooked. It certainly isn’t ready to be a centerpiece of a holiday table picture. But is it edible?

I whipped out a knife and sliced a tiny piece just to see…ohhhh soooo good. It was moist inspite of being over cooked…and tender. The bottom of the roaster was filled with drippings. Lots of gravy to be made there.

So looks like I will have to try again to get that centerpiece Turkey for the picture . I might not get to it in time for this year’s Thanksgiving. After all, how much turkey can one person and 2 cats eat? At least there’s always next year.

For now I’m enjoying my early Thanksgiving feast with a squashed but tasty turkey centerpiece.

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