the great turkey hunt of 2005

Thanksgiving is just a few days away and we have finally “scored” our turkey! We started looking for one a few weeks ago and were advised to ask for a “grande dinde”. So on Friday night we stopped by a few of the Boucheries/Charcuteries to see if we could order a turkey. “non” was the answer... maybe for Christmas, but not now. So we went by Les Halles (a huge market place where they have everything) and one nice man told us to come back “mardi matin”. So today is mardi and it is morning(matin) and so we went to see the nice man again. And voila! Une Grande Dinde!

These are not exactly the big Butterballs you find in the U.S. stores. These birds still had their head and wings and a few feathers on them. The price tag said 21.99 euros. Quite a bit to pay for a turkey, we thought. And the bird was only about 4 kilos, or about 9 pounds. Hmmmm kinda small... we thought... and to think you get them free if you go Krogering enough before the big day! So… considering that we will have (at last count) about 10 people to feed... we wondered if we should buy two of them at that outrageous price. We thought better of doing that when we realized that the oven probably wouldn’t hold two, and certainly the refrigerator would be too small. So we bought only one.

The guy started to work on the bird... taking out the insides, chopping off the head, plucking the remaining feathers, then burning off the remaining fuzz. (And to think we actually want to eat this thing...!)

So after a few French comments from the nice man on what a beautiful turkey we had just bought… he presented us with the bill. I wondered why such a fuss over a 'beautiful turkey'... you know, he sounded like a car salesman telling us what a beautiful car we had just purchased. Anyway... this baby’s price was (are you sitting down??) 83.30 euros. Yep, with the current exchange rate, that’s about a hundred bucks... and not 21.99 for the whole bird, but 21.99 a kilo! And I think we also paid for the parts that got cut off.