Speaking Of Culinary Overkill
Sarah and I will be having Thanksgiving together this Thursday. For the first time, we will neither be nor have guests for this holiday. (Although I have not spent Thanksgiving in my parents' home in nigh-on a decade, we have in the past either travelled to the home of Sarah's parents or hosted family and friends in our home.) Our initial impulse was to pass on making a real Thanksgiving meal. As the day got closer, though, we realized that this wasn't such a hot idea. We're traditional people, and we'd be really sorry to have skipped this wonderful American feast on account of sloth. What's more, we've got to get used to being the keepers of such things. The "going home for Thanksgiving" chapter of our life is closing, and the "having Thanksgiving at home" chapter is opening. We've all got to make the transition from "son" to "father" sometime; for me that sometime is now.
And so it was that we (OK, I) decided to go ahead and fix a traditional turkey dinner this Thanksgiving. As there are only two of us, I thought I'd buy a single turkey breast. Then we'd make some stuffing, some mashed potatoes, corn, etc. The basic idea is that one can make all the usual dishes if one simply makes very small batches of each. Unfortunately, this idea is somewhat difficult to put into practice. Case in point: in order to lure in business this week, my local supermarket offerred whole turkeys at absurdly low prices to customers who bought X number of dollars' worth of other groceries. In other words, they'd basically give you a turkey if you bought all the fixings from them. This lead to a very strange situation. I went into the store looking for a ~5 lb turkey breast (leftovers, you know). Such were on sale for the very reasonable price of $1.30/lb, or about $6.50. Not bad, right? In the same freezer, though, were whole 12-14 lb turkeys for the absurdly low price of $5. So the second breast and all of the dark meat combined cost a total of - 1.50 dollars.
Well, it turns out that I'm just way too Scottish to pay more for less --- ever. I won't even take less for the same price; when milk is buy one gallon/get one free, I take the free gallon home even though I know damn well that I'll never even finish the first one. Is that irresponsible? Sure. But I'm psychologically incapable of leaving the free milk in the store. Similarly, I found that I was just not able to pay $1.50 more to get less turkey. So I bought a 13 pound turkey. To feed two people. And so what I've said with respect to birthday cake goes double for Thanskgiving turkey: if you need some, by all means come by and take some.
And so it was that we (OK, I) decided to go ahead and fix a traditional turkey dinner this Thanksgiving. As there are only two of us, I thought I'd buy a single turkey breast. Then we'd make some stuffing, some mashed potatoes, corn, etc. The basic idea is that one can make all the usual dishes if one simply makes very small batches of each. Unfortunately, this idea is somewhat difficult to put into practice. Case in point: in order to lure in business this week, my local supermarket offerred whole turkeys at absurdly low prices to customers who bought X number of dollars' worth of other groceries. In other words, they'd basically give you a turkey if you bought all the fixings from them. This lead to a very strange situation. I went into the store looking for a ~5 lb turkey breast (leftovers, you know). Such were on sale for the very reasonable price of $1.30/lb, or about $6.50. Not bad, right? In the same freezer, though, were whole 12-14 lb turkeys for the absurdly low price of $5. So the second breast and all of the dark meat combined cost a total of - 1.50 dollars.
Well, it turns out that I'm just way too Scottish to pay more for less --- ever. I won't even take less for the same price; when milk is buy one gallon/get one free, I take the free gallon home even though I know damn well that I'll never even finish the first one. Is that irresponsible? Sure. But I'm psychologically incapable of leaving the free milk in the store. Similarly, I found that I was just not able to pay $1.50 more to get less turkey. So I bought a 13 pound turkey. To feed two people. And so what I've said with respect to birthday cake goes double for Thanskgiving turkey: if you need some, by all means come by and take some.
posted by Brian @ 3:16 PM
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