Thanksgiving Turkey #48

    Beginning with Thanksgiving Day 1968 in our Schaghticoke apartment, I have cooked, if my count is correct, 48 Thanksgiving turkeys.  Fresh, frozen, injected, not injected, about as many different brands as there are, or were, all of them over 20 lbs., as there were many people
at the table and a few take-out dinners for homebodies.
    This year's is from Market 32---Grade A Shady Brook Farm Fresh Young Turkey weighing in at 21.28 lbs. and at $1.29 a pound costing $27.45.  I wasn't committed to buying a fresh bird as the frozen Butterballs were .99 a pound, and others .59 or less, but my shopping time was delayed by an unexpected interlude, and I didn't think a 20+ pounder would have time to thaw.
  I plan to do most of the cooking, as usual, and since I have only one stove and oven, start preparations early.  I made the cranberry sauce, so we'll have the whole berry as well as the "Canberry" sauce, the kind with the markings from the can. A certain guest used to mock that, but the year I omitted it, he asked for it.  Kids!   I baked a shell for the lemon meringue pie, which I'll fill later.
   Today I turned the oven on to bake the mincemeat and pumpkin pies.  I remembered too late that I had laid the bread out to dry for the stuffing and had put it in the oven for safekeeping.  I'll need to buy more bread.  Before I reconstituted the mincemeat mix, I read the list of ingredients I'd need and laid them out on the counter.  I hadn't recalled there being an egg in the recipe, but it has been a whole year since the last time I made a mince pie, so I added the egg to the mincemeat mix.  Then I realized the egg was for brushing on top to make a nice brown crust.  Oh, well, the egg will provide added nutrients, and the top actually got a little too brown anyway, especially around the edges, although I protected it with an aluminum crust protector that Dorothy gave me. Now I have to make room for them in the space-limited refrigerator.  And then on to chopping the celery and onions.