lazycook, be sure you roast at no lower than 325, I usually do mine at 350 and a 13-14 pound turkey would take about 3 and a half hours, unstuffed. How to thaw? A bird that size will take 2-3 days to thaw in the fridge or you can submerge it, still wrapped, in cold water. Change the water every half hour or so and it'll be thawed in 8 hours, give or take an hour. I've been known to leave a frozen turkey overnight in the sink, although I realize that the USDA says that's an absolute no-no, so I don't advise other people to do it. As for temperature, I roast to 165F, I find that 180F in the thigh gives you way overcooked breast meat. I do hope that you have company coming or you are going to have a ton of leftover turkey, the "experts" recommend a pound per person. Good luck, cooking turkey is easy, actually. If you want the skin crispy, roast uncovered. You can start at a higher heat and turn the heat down if you prefer, and Ann T does a quicker high-heat method, but it can make a mess in the oven if you don't have the right pan. Annie

You can order a fresh one and then you will not have to wait for it to thaw. If you are planning to do the "dry salt" method of roasting, you will need to pick it up on Monday, November 19 to start the salting process. Personally, I am not cooking a whole turkey this year. If you wanted to dry salt a frozen turkey, you would need to start thawing it on Sunday at the latest. Lars

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 am making two 9 lb breasts this year. I have them thawing now and will brine them just over night so I'll need them completely thawed by Wed. I have a cell phone pic of my ahem breasts if anyone wants to see LOL!!! No seriously I am taking lots of pics this year to make a scrapbook to pass along to DD. Shhhh!!! Its a secret. I plan to document the entire meal all the prep, tips, serving ect... Cheers! Susie