I order my turkey from a local raised-on-pasture poultry farm, scheduled to pick it up tomorrow. Got an email this afternoon that this year he ended up with a very few 18# (8-9kg) birds, and all the rest are under 12# (5.5kg). None in the 12-16# range that most people want.
He’s offered to refund deposits and allow cancellations, which is going to hurt his bottom line pretty hard.
I’m hoping I can buy two small ones tomorrow. If not, I will have to get creative to feed 9 people on Thursday.
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Duck breast? It’s delicious smoked.
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Two small birds may be a better option than one large bird?
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@DukeTrout I’ve not smoked anything, ever, so I don’t feel confident enough to try that on short notice. Would be glorious though, especially with judgy extended in-laws coming.
@NukeML That’s what I’m hoping. If a few people cancel their orders, then I will buy two 10#ers, which should fit side by side in my standard oven.
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Braising would also work. Think short ribs, but duck!
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Well of course ducks have short ribs
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It would be from a cooking standpoint – less time, and easier to deal with fitting in the oven – plus you can try something a little different with each one for fun.
And then the poultry farm would still get a decent sale instead of losing the sale.
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New adage: Two small birds in the hand are worth more than one large bird in the bush that doesn’t exist 
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Growing up we had that large traditional turkey with all the trimmings but we ate it at 1 pm.
The real meal that everyone looked forward to was cold turkey sandwiches (with brown mustard, horseradish and swiss cheese) in the evening with a pint of beer and root beer for the kids.
In between meals we played football with the cousins on frozen fields or went sled riding if we had enough snow. We’d come home bruised and frostbitten with runny noses.
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Branching out a bit from recipes… Any lessons learned, or tips to share?
Here’s one from many years ago in my early twenties, definitely learned the hard way:
If you’re having a group of friends over for a potluck Thanksgiving dinner, and one of the friends offers to provide a turkey because they work at a grocery store and can get one at a discount, and they keep it at their house because you don’t have room at your house, and they arrive with it in the early afternoon so you’ll have a good three or four hours to roast it before dinnertime, MAKE SURE THEY KNOW THAT A FROZEN TURKEY HAS TO BE DEFROSTED!!
I did my best with trying to defrost it under running water (a no-no, food-safety-wise, and it didn’t really work anyway)…we finally just put it in the oven and did our best to keep people entertained…at some point we all went to the local park and played on the swings…one by one a number of very-irritated people left…and IIRC the remaining few of us finally sat down to dinner around 11pm or midnight. Don’t let it happen to you!!
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We’re having a true Thanksgiving event, where only one person even knows everyone who will be there (not me!) and the cooking will be divided between at least 5 people. I was informed that two young men (mid-20s) will be “in charge of the meats”. I sent a quick reminder to my vegetarian daughter, who thus wouldn’t know this otherwise, that she needed to remind them to take the giblets, etc. out of both ends of the turkey before preparing it to go into the oven. Hopefully mistakes will not be made!
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Two small turkeys: 10.8 and 6.2 lbs. Dry brine starting tomorrow evening. Cooking will be faster, so there is that.
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And you were worried!
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I’ve never heard of this described as a “true” version. Is this supposed to recall the original in some way?
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I just mean, that unlike other holidays that are often sacrosanct – you usually don’t bring a new boyfriend or girlfriend to your family for Christmas until there’s an engagement or else some years of ongoing relationship, for example – Thanksgiving is much more about a hodgepodge of guests based on location and availability. For example, we would have international students come to our home for Thanksgiving when my 24yo was in college locally. And maybe an extended family member or two, plus the grandparents. Or our 3-generation family went to a friend’s home to spend Thanksgiving with their 4-generation family. It has more of a sense of openness and welcoming all. In fact, it’s nice when there is at least one or two people who aren’t part of the inner circle.
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We went to a big family Thanksgiving once where the host forgot to thaw.
All was good because there was plenty of other food including a ham. Everyone got turkey to take home once it came out of the oven around 10pm.
That was my wife’s side of the family where everyone just rolls with whatever.
My family would have panicked and had a freak out.
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Ah, ok. That makes sense. We’re have four international students (Japanese) over to our house for Thanksgiving. Should be interesting.
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Oh, that’ll be a great experience for them. We don’t have anything like Thanksgiving in Japan, and a lot of the dishes served will likely be things that they have never eaten before. Even Turkey in general is almost impossible to find in Japan.
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