Turkey for Two

My turkey dinner (plus pie and ice cream!)

Once again, we spent Thanksgiving in central Florida. We did get a last minute invitation to join some of the husband's older golfing buddies from our denomination who winter in a gated community in the Orlando area. I did not know any of them and asked him to decline. They had some other unexpected guests who maxed out their table, so it was all good.

Except that I had to (or rather decided to) cook a qualifying turkey dinner for two.

At Costco on Wednesday afternoon the fresh turkeys all looked way too large, but we selected a generous pumpkin pie, which tastes good for several days (unlike turkey leftovers)--especially good topped with Publix premium vanilla ice cream! Later that day at Publix I found a Li'l Butterball that looked perfect:

All the buzz seemed to be about spatchcocking this year, so I asked the husband to google it to see if he thought he could manage the process. He first googled cock spatch. I don't know what he learned but it made me laugh just thinking about it!

Ready to spatchcock! Notice the photo-bombing dog.

I also bought two sweet potatoes, a bag of cranberries, haricot verts (thin French green beans), mushroom soup, portabellas, and on sudden inspiration, a jar of Smucker's orange marmalade with Splenda, which, along with a little added sugar and cinnamon made an easy, tasty cranberry sauce. The other total shortcut was purchasing a container of prepared potatoes. I did cook the giblets and used them for a tiny blob of stuffing which I tucked under the spatchcocked bird. I  pre-cooked the beans and sauteed the mushrooms. I smeared a washed sweet potato with Land O'Lakes butter and wrapped it in foil to cook alongside the turkey. I made a little gravy from the pan juices.

I had nothing else to do for the day except feed the dog, empty the pool filter and vac and water 5 plants, so it was just enough cooking to make me feel good about myself.

Do not tell the parent/owners, who never feed the dog people food (and he does not beg), but I snuck a small bit of hot turkey broth into his food and sliced up the inedible parts of the cooked gizzard into tiny pieces. Such a subtle and harmless thing to do, and sooo delicious! Who heard of eating deer on Thanksgiving! Even if you are in Iceland and eating reindeer! This was the dog's can:

That's about it for Thanksgiving Day this year. No church. Just a laid-back day, with enough good food to satisfy!