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!

I have had a Big Easy for 5 years and it tastes almost the same as deep fried. Some people like it better. It does actually fry in it's own fat, the infrared is what makes the difference over baking and roasting. That is why they can call it fried. You have the crispy skin and moist meat like deep fried. Without $40 worth of peanut oil that may go rancid before you use it again. A suggestion if you decide to get one. Cover the breast and wings with foil for the first hour, leaving the back and lower parts exposed. Then remove the foil, the white meat cooks faster than the dark meat.

I have a Tovala countertop oven that convection bakes, broils, steams and reheats. Since it is just the two of us, I use it a lot, even though I also have a Samsung oven with the two oven capacity so I could use the smaller oven. This thread has been an eye-opener. I love the way baked veggies taste and frozen potatoes cook in the Tovala. It never occurred to me that this is what the "air frying" hoopla is describing. Off to learn more, thanks!

Does it fry? No. Does it cook small amounts of food, convection style? Yes. We like ours and since we are recent empty nesters, I love it for roasted veg, thin cuts of meat which are easy to overcook conventionally. Great for warming up leftovers that could get soggy in the microwave. It cooks faster than our toaster oven and makes the best baked potatoes/sweet potatoes ever. I keep it in the pantry just off our kitchen and of late have been using it several times a week. Today, I did roasted beets which I will reheat when I do baby potatoes and green beans for dinner. My 20 something daughters use theirs several times a week. For the investment it's a great little appliance provided you have the space for it. Since we don't eat a lot of toast and we have a toaster for when we want to, I am thinking of getting rid of my toaster oven, now that we have the air fryer. ETA - when we were a family of four, it wouldn't have been as sufficient as it is for us now.