It doesn't appear to have any freezer burn and the original wrapper doesn't seem damaged at all. I haven't thawed it out yet. I guess I'll cook it with a backup plan of BLT's, just in case. If it doesn't taste good I can give it to my cat he loves people food. I plan to brine it and cook it in my infrared cooker. Every turkey that I have cooked that way turns out great!

How long? About 3-4 years. I can't remember. I let this ensete die because it was so big. I didn't dare take it outside during the summer months because the wind would break it off. Because of this, I couldn't flush the soil with water to flush out salt build up from fertilizers and other stuff in my hard water, so it eventually went down hill. I just put it outside to finish dying a week ago. However my other 3 that I put outside during Summer are down stairs in my unlit, unheated basement room in dormancy. In the Fall, I cut them down to 5-6' stumps, repot them in 15 gallon nursery pots, and stick them in the basement till next Spring. They have large thick "trunks". I do this every year and they come back to full beauty in the Summer.

Just as an aside - the man who had a heart attack would have applied for disability, which is NOT welfare. And which he had undoubtedly paid into in the form of Social Security taxes all the years that he did work. The amount he would have collected would have been a fraction of what he made during his working years. I am on disability myself - and I'm sure there are many others on this list who are as well. We are not deadbeats or layabouts, and we are not raking in undeserved huge piles of cash. We are getting by, by and large, and some people don't even manage that on disability. The man could not have received "welfare" as even when it existed it was not paid out to men. But aside from that - back to the original subject. Frankly I would have been quite up-front about telling someone who offered to bring a frozen turkey that they should either bring a COOKED turkey, or bring something else - also already fully prepared. Seriously, any adult should know better. "It's too much trouble for ME to make a turkey, but I'll dump this onerous task that I can't do on someone else" - that's just not acceptable. You know that nearly every grocery store in the country offers fully cooked and hot turkeys through their deli departments, if nothing else. So they could still buy a fully cooked turkey if they didn't know how to cook one themselves. I would have had no qualms whatsoever about telling someone, politely, with a big smile even, that only a COOKED bird was acceptable, and then offer alternatives for things they could bring instead. On the other side of the equation - the host doing something obnoxious instead of one of the guests - one year a fellow grad student offered to make Thanksgiving dinner - and then charged every one a fee PLUS required us to bring something. Needless to say I never attended a dinner at that person's house again! I figure she cleared at least $50 on that deal, plus kept all the leftovers. I found out about this in the car on the way over there. Too late by far to back out, and we had to stop at a grocery on the way so we could all buy something "to bring" - selected from a very specific list which she had provided (at the last minute) to one of the other students. Had I known in advance about the "to bring", I'd have made something. Had I known in advance about the fee, I'd have bowed out entirely. That's the other side of rude dinner party behaviour, LOL! Thanksgiving is no longer stressful for me as I stopped doing it the year my son (now 29) was born. I was one day out of the hospital, he was 3 days old, and the entire family (and all their kids and various and sundry significant others) descended on me with their usual ridiculously high expectations. Nobody brought anything, they all knew I was less than 24 hours out of the hospital after childbirth, nobody even OFFERED to bring anything. They all sat down and proceeded to gripe about every. single. thing. They were particularly incensed that there were no home-made rolls (I had bought good-quality dinner rolls) and no pumpkin pie (which I have never made in my life anyway, including for all the 20 preceding family Thanksgiving dinners). They complained about the lack of cranberry relish, another item which I have never willingly made and certainly hadn't made in the 8 years since leaving home as an adult. I spent 2 days preparing a huge feast, and then I spent the entire Thanksgiving "celebration" inundated with nitpicking and whining. In 20 years, I had done every Thanksgiving dinner - since I was 6 years old - by myself except for 2. And they KNEW I was pregnant and due to deliver sometime in late November/early December. The fact that I was 10 days early had things gone according to "plan" doesn't help, as if I HADN'T been early, I'd have been hugely pregnant and about to pop while still having to make dinner for 12 ingrates. So, that was the last bird day for me, and no one else ever bothered to do a family holiday meal ever again (keeping in mind I nearly always did Xmas meals as well for the family). Sometimes one sister would do a mini-family meal, where she would pointedly NOT invite certain of the rest of the siblings - and she always wondered why my dad boycotted those meals. He didn't want to go unless the WHOLE family was there. Otherwise he knew he would have to listen to hours of sniping by those present against the unfavored remainder of his offspring, LOL! I take that back, I did do bird day one more time - when my dad was in his late 80's. Nobody but the sister who was living with him and mooching off him bothered to show up - until the next day, when some of them swung by just long enough to grab leftovers and complain about there not being any turkey (my dad hates turkey and had asked for a ham) or any pumpkin pie. Talk about gall, LOL!

We can get legs and necks year round. And the breast. My mother likes to roast a breast a few times a year for a Sunday meal and the rest for sandwiches. Turkey is a common deli sandwich so i suppose the legs and necks come from that processing. Necks a great for stock. I did put a couple legs on the grill/smoker last summer when we did a mixed grill of various things. I did consider getting an extra bird to trim and freeze parts but our freezer is so full now. I grew up with the big injected birds and never anything special. Our bird this year was D'Artangnan. Gorgeous and no comparison to any i've had in the past. The Friday brunch casserole with dressing/stuffing, poached eggs on top, the sandwiches, the stock, the soup last night, ...stock in the freezer. A few breast slices with gravy, frozen with a packet of dressing for a later meal. At 3.99lb i consider it a bargain for all it gave. If i had to feed an army of Aunts and Uncles, and kids and teens, i would look for the cheapest to 59cents a lb. non-enhanced/injected. We often had a ham as well. This goes back to the 60's when my Grandmother hosted. 6children all had 3-4, i was the youngest of 22 grandchildren. My Grandmother had a Diner and her specialty was cake and pie. (that is all us kids cared about)...she had a glass countertop commercial pie safe, two commercial gas ovens, and even a two glass door sliding fridge in her home kitchen. Raised chickens for the eggs and fryers. Turkey from a near-by farm friend. Usually three. Pop alway had a Smithfield ham. So that was easily 38 and she always invited some friends and employees....i was probably 3-6 yrs old during those few gatherings before we dispersed to individual holiday family meals. I remember the pies and my Uncle holding me up by my ankles with one hand and showing off around the room, "we'er going to roast you!". Sometimes 3 or 4 times. I hated it. Tramatic experience and spent the day hiding from him. (i think alcohol was involved).