Ok, I guessed on number 10 but still got 100! (Fifth generation.) Think it helped spending all day at Washington-on-the-Brazos and Barrington Farm?

Thanks for all of the replies and advice. Just so we don't miscommunicate, I'm adding the details of what I did. The advice I was following came from a newspaper article - link to a copy of the article at the bottom of this post. 1. The turkey was thawed. 2. I used an electronic thermometer with the sensor inserted into the thickest part of the thigh - I do not believe I was hitting any bones. This is the type of thermometer where the sensor is wired to a remote display, so you can monitor the food temperature as it cooks. 3. I've read that if the thermometer is placed in the turkey's thigh, then your goal temperature is 175 - 180 degrees farenheit. 4. Roasted the turkey at 325 degrees. 5. Calculated the roasting time based on turkey's weight and the fact that it was stuffed. Reached that time and well beyond it without reaching 175 - 180 on the thermometer. Once the calculate cooking time had been reached, it was a question of which do you defer to in determining if the turkey is done: the elapsed cooking time or the reading on the thermometer? From the sounds of it, the 175 - 180 mark is not always attainable, and if that is the case, determine when the turkey is done by referring to the elapsed roasting time. Here is a link that might be useful: How and Why to Roast a Turkey Breast Side Down

Let's see, what can be made ahead and frozen? Chicken pot pie, or even better since you're at the ocean, Lobster Pot Pie, I saw Ina Garten make one and couldn't figure out why I'd never thought of it. She used puff pastry dough, making it fast, instead of homemade dough. Cabbage rolls do well made ahead and frozen, then baked with the sauce when needed, or just cooked all day in a crockpot. Macaroni and cheese is easy and fast to put together and nearly everyone likes it. A "taco bar" has been discussed here many times, and it's something that people can put together as they like, you can use ground meat, marinated chicken, pulled pork or beef, or all or any combination, and some tortilla chips along with the toppings could yield nachos and taco salad for those who like that. LindaC's idea of meatloaf is a good one, and a couple of roasted chickens can yield hot chicken sandwiches, that above mentioned pot pie, chicken tetrazzini, chicken salad sandwiches, chicken enchiladas. You can't go wrong with a couple of roasted chickens. Your leftover roast can yield a shepherd's pie too, my girls loved it, along with Spanish Rice made with ground beef to make it a full meal. As well as dinners, how about breakfast? Lots of breakfast casseroles are quick and easy, and I make Woodie's Creme Brulee French Toast the night before and just bake it in the morning. The smell alone got my kids out of bed! Biscuits and gravy are pretty fast, if you bake biscuits the night before for supper and then heat them in the morning. BreaKfast burritos are easy to make ahead and freeze, as are "McMuffins", which then only need thawing and heating. Oatmeal cooks overnight with fruit in the crockpot really well too. I'm sure you have cookies, brownies, desserts covered. LOL Cookies and brownies freeze well, but the dough can also be made ahead and refrigerated for a day or two, and baked off as needed. Oh, and I have a cinnamon roll recipe that calls for making the dough the night before, letting it rise in the refrigerator and baking them the next day for hot, fresh cinnamon rolls, if you're interested in that. Annie

I grew up on a dairy farm and that was operated in the same manner as the Amish do today. Grandmother had an 8ft long coal stove in the kitchen and our idea of running water was whenever one of us boys entered the kitchen Grandma would hand us a 5gal pail and say, "Run out to the spring and get me some water." The next boy in the room got handed the coal bucket to fill, and the next boy had to take a couple 5gal buckets of vegetable timmings out to the hog lot and more often than not during the canning season one of the younger boys got detailed to stay at the house and assist Grandma in the kitchen. As a consequence I began learning how to cook when I was about 5 or 6 years old, and I don't regret a minute of that time. Dissassters? Wow, I could write a book about dissassters I have made in the kitchen but one will always stick out in my mind. At about 13yrs old my cousin & I got the silly idea to make some home made rootbeer. (In those days you could buy Hires Rootbeer Syrup in a tube like a huge toothpaste tube in the spice section of any grocery store for about $1). My cousin and I spent about 3 weeks rounding up empty soda bottles & washing them out, all the while saving our allowance money to get the rootbeer syrup. We finally had enough bottles washed out, got the syrup, set up the bottle capper and commenced to mixing our brew in a huge 5gal crock. First you add the water, then the syrup, then sugar and finally a cube of flieshmans yeast, mix it all up and let it set about 24 hours then you bottle it and let it age 14 days to make the fizz. When it was all done my cousin and I each took a bottle from the basment up to the kitchen to get a bottle opener. I snapped the opener on the bottle cap, started to lift it and WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM, the lid flew off and the rootbeer spurted up out of that bottle so high it hit the ceiling. Talk about a mess...LOL...My cousin tried opening his with exactly the same result. What went wrong we wondered? Then we got to recounting our mixing procedures. It seems that my cousin had not seen me put the yeast in, so without saying a word, he put another cake of yeast in. But as is true of teenagers everywhere, we weren't gonna let a little thing like atomic fizz prevent us from drinking our rootbeer. We just put a dishpan in the sink, then one of us would carefully open the bottle while the other one held a pot upside down over the bottle to catch the spray and let it go into the dishpan, which we then poured in our glasses and enjoyed out rootbeer, even though it did have a rather strong yeasty taste..LOL