Thursday, November 09, 2006

Let's talk turkey

Thanksgiving comes early this year, which I like because it means more legitimate Christmas preparation time, but early Thanksgivings always sneak up on me. It takes a week or so to get over the Halloween sugar assault, and now there are only 2 weeks ‘til turkey day.

My least favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner is the turkey prep. It makes me want to become a vegetarian every time. Last year we tried
Jennie-O’s Oven Ready
turkey. No thawing, no rinsing, no digging in the cavity. That’s my kind of turkey.

This year, my regular grocery store doesn’t have them. They have plenty of Jennie-O products, just not the Oven Ready turkeys. I’m still holding out hope that they’ll get them, but with only 2 weeks left, that hope is starting to fade.

They do have Shady Brook Farms Simply Done turkeys. The concept is similar, but this one needs to be thawed. I’m afraid I’d forget to take it out of the freezer.

And I’d really like to stick with Jennie-O. You see, my hometown is also home to Jennie-O, so I grew up with it…turkey hot dogs, turkey bologna, turkey ham, etc. We ate ground turkey before it became a well-known alternative to ground beef. It was local, and it was cheap. As a kid, I hated it. What I wouldn’t have given for real hamburger or a beef hot dog!

But now it’s a nostalgia thing, I guess. Willmar was such a nowhere place back then, and all I ever wanted to do was to get out. Now that I’m thousands of miles away, I get a little thrill seeing “Willmar, Minn.” on the package and knowing where it is…knowing that the turkey came from the same place I did.

Of course, I fared better than the turkey…I made it out alive.

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