{"id":6014,"date":"2025-11-24T14:24:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T20:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/?p=6014"},"modified":"2025-11-24T14:24:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T20:24:20","slug":"why-not-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/why-not-turkey\/","title":{"rendered":"Why  Not Turkey?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Instead of buying beef, why not turkey? Through all the talk of the cost of Thanksgiving dinner, one fact jumped out at me. Turkey is much less expensive than beef.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because I have to avoid deli meats, the only turkey I buy throughout the year is ground turkey. Now I\u2019m wondering why? Turkey isn\u2019t hard to roast. It\u2019s a delicious alternative to chicken. I like it. What am I thinking?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Maybe this is another sausage ball issue. There was never a reason to only make them for the holidays, and yet that\u2019s what I did for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bird flu may cause the price of turkey to continue to increase, but right now it doesn\u2019t make much sense not to prepare it on a regular basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I won\u2019t purchase a large bird frequently. There will be too many leftovers. But adding it as a regular item in my shopping cart only makes sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Perhaps the numerous posts about how much trouble it is to cook turkey deter others from cooking it. But I don\u2019t understand those posts. There isn\u2019t that much prep required. Maybe the complaints stem from trying to handle large, unwieldy birds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For safety reasons, I don\u2019t place stuffing inside the bird. Once I\u2019ve removed any parts that have been placed in the cavities, I place an apple (cut in half), some celery sticks, and a carrot or two in the turkey along with whatever herbs I have handy. I pat the turkey dry and rub it with olive oil. Then I place it in an oven bag. None of that takes long and the cleanup is minimal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many turkeys come with pop-out thermometers making doneness easy to determine. My oven came with a digital meat thermometer attachment that I can also use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The new year will most likely see me eating turkey salad, turkey sandwiches topped with arugula from the garden, turkey pot pie, turkey tacos, turkey mac &amp; cheese, and perhaps turkey with dressing even though it\u2019s not Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Try as I may, I can\u2019t think of a reason not to include it in regular meals all year long. I mean, why <em>not<\/em> turkey?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Instead of buying beef, why not turkey? Through all the talk of the cost of Thanksgiving dinner, one fact jumped out at me. Turkey is much less expensive than beef. Because I have to avoid deli meats, the only turkey I buy throughout the year is ground turkey. Now I\u2019m wondering why? Turkey isn\u2019t hard &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/why-not-turkey\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Why  Not Turkey?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2554],"tags":[3935,2497,2964,226,268],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6014"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6015,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6014\/revisions\/6015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}