Turkey Shortage

Butterball announces turkey shortage, fresh ones over 16 lbs. anyway. And I am just recently reading about this when the big day is just around the corner, next week? There are plenty of frozen or lower weight fresh turkeys to go around. Did I mention that turkey day is looming? Well I need to be sure I have enough time to thaw the main entrée, and everyone that’s ever cooked a turkey knows that’s complicated. I guess I could get two eight pounders dress them up identically and serve them as twins. Or I could go completely off the reservation and serve something else. Years ago we took a family camping trip in the Smoky Mountains and we cooked individual Cornish game hens (9 of them and we were really packed in the tent like sardines too, food is definitely on my mind) over a campfire but even that took prior planning. Apparently Americans serve roughly 46 million turkeys on Thanksgiving, with 88 percent of all Americans feasting on the bird. There are more than 248 million turkeys raised each year in the U.S. except, perhaps this year with its shortage of fresh 16 pounders. Maybe someone should just announce that the market has been flooded with a bunch of stale, frozen underweight or obese turkeys, nothing in between because the sixteen pounders have all been photo shopped, or do like a lot of retailers seem to be doing this year, and skip Thanksgiving all together.