Every Thanksgiving I buy at least 2 turkeys. Why? You can get them CHEAP, everyone loves them, they feed a crowd, and after we're all burned out on turkey around mid-December, I let a month or so pass, recreate the Pilgrim's feast, and it's like ambrosia for the body and soul once again...

One of my New Year's resolutions as I've mentioned, is to spend less money on groceries this year. That's not easy for me. I love to make lots of good food and feed lots of people lots. :) But I'm being quite intentional about using what's in my pantry and staying keenly aware of what I purchase, rather than casually tossing stuff in my cart on a whim. Although I don't feel I've been extravagant, I can certainly be casual :) especially when I'm shopping hungry...

I'll keep you posted on my progress, but in the meantime I've been enjoying the challenge of creating meals out of what's on hand and being content with making, for instance, a clean-out-the-fridge cold pasta salad topped with albacore tuna for dinner when under normal circumstances, I would have felt sort of bad preparing such a dish for a winter evening meal.

So...I pulled Tom out of the deep freeze a few days back to let him slowly thaw in the fridge and he was ready to cook yesterday. I decided to make my life even easier by using instant stuffing mix, and not stuffing the bird like I usually do, which isn't a difficult task but is a huge endeavor for some reason. Can I get a witness?!?!?!

I never bake a turkey without a turkey cooking bag. Plain and simple. They contain the juices very well, I can cook the turkey in record time and I've been hooked on them since my ole' neighbor, Barb, introduced me to them about 30 years ago.

The part that always seems to stump me on turkey cooking is how to know when the turkey is done and for goodness sakes, not to dry the meat out! Let me just say here and now for the WWW, the most common mistake cooks make is cooking stuff too long, whether it's cookies, meat, veggies or eggs. Yuck. I hate dry food.

Consequently, I use a meat thermometer. I have two. An instant-read one which no cook should be without, and a bake-in version which is placed in the raw meat in advance of placing in the oven and measures the temp gradually as the meat cooks, which no cook really should be without, either.

Here's the line that always perplexes me, typed on the inner paperwork of the turkey cooking bag. 'INSERT MEAT THERMOMETER THROUGH SLIT IN THE BAG INTO THE THICKEST PART OF INNER THIGH, NOT TOUCHING BONE.' Yeah, right. I'm not a doctor, and locating this particular, ideal spot for the thermometer always puzzles me. Sigh. But I try. For 30 years I've tried. Without an x-ray machine, who could get it exactly right?

So...just before my darling baby granddaughter arrived, I prepped the turkey and got him roasting. As baby napped 4 hours later, I prepped the stuffing mix, the potatoes for mashing, the yams for baking, the corn for simmering, the gravy for thickening and the rolls for rising. The canned, whole cranberry sauce was put in a bowl and voila' we were ready.

To my delight, besides me, hubby, baby girl and our youngest boy, 1, then another, then another, then another and another showed up just in time to serve. God multiplied the loaves and the fishes and we are continuing to enjoy the bounty of this feast...

Grateful.