Thinking About Thanksgiving Dinner

For some reason I both love and hate planning holiday meals. I really love cooking and baking. I (often) enjoy doing it with the kids help. I enjoy cooking and baking with my husband. I like dreaming up menu ideas and making what people love to eat. For some reason, though, I find it tedious to go through my menu and make a list of the items and quantities I will need for a large meal. B-O-R-I-N-G.

However, since it is almost time for Thanksgiving, it has come time to start in the planning. So, as I dream about the fantastic turkey we will butcher in a few days, brine, and cook, I will also make a list of everything I need from the store. The biggest change this year is going to be our turkey. This spring we picked up several heritage turkey poults (baby turkeys, day old in our case). We bought Royal Palms and Slates, hoping to have several hens so we could eat most of the toms for the holiday and breed the others. Unfortunately, we ended up with way too many toms and only two hens. So now we have to figure out which toms we keep for breeding, which ones we will eat, and sell the ones that are left over.

Right now, Greg likes the appearance of the Slate Turkeys the best. I'm not attached to one over the other, and I am more than happy to keep looking for another breed we might like better. We are planning to get more poults, hopefully with a greater ratio of hens, this January or so. We want them to be grown enough to be put outside with the adults come spring. Since heritage breeds take longer to mature than the "traditional" breeds used in large farming operations, the birds should be ready to butcher by the holidays again.

As for this weeks event planning, I figure we will do the rest of our shopping tomorrow or Monday so we can avoid the last minute rushes of people. I hate, hate, hate having to shop when there is a mass of other folks at the same time. Makes me feel claustrophobic and twitchy. Then I can start cooking by Tuesday/Wednesday. Fun times ahead.