Cooking Thanksgiving dinner is a daunting prospect. \nMost of my friends' mothers didn't even attempt to on Thanksgiving. Their families packed their things, drove over the hills and through the woods to grandmother's house and let her do all the work. This has left me to wonder if when this generation of grandmothers dies, Thanksgiving dinner as we know it will fade away, only to be replaced by TV dinners and Hamburger Helper.\nMy mother, who began her day in the kitchen at 9 a.m. and didn't end it until the last dish was on the table at 5 p.m., quite literally waged war against the meal. Between balancing squash, corn, carrots, green beans, sweet potatoes, cranberry sherbet, pumpkin pie, two kinds of stuffing, gravy and of course the damned turkey, she looked physically drained by the time the family sat down to dinner.\nAt the annual Thanksgiving get-together of Indiana Daily Student staffers, the job of cooking the turkey always falls, to much complaining and protest, on the most mature and oldest staffers, in the hopes that along with the ability to hold their tongues and manage their time well, these people have also somehow picked up the ability to effectively cook a 25-pound monstrosity of a turkey in a dinky college apartment oven.\nAnd feeding that many people is expensive. For eight adults, a relatively standard gathering by American standards, the Butterball Turkey Web site (www.butterball.com) recommends serving 12 pounds of turkey. At $1.29 or more per pound, that can really add up. Tack on sides and dessert, and a student who is looking to treat his friends to a home-cooked holiday meal could end up spending beer money for the next semester-and-a-half.\nBut it's not nearly as hard or as costly as it seems. By cutting a few barely perceptible corners and penny pinching, I cobbled together a Thanksgiving dinner for eight starved college students with just more than $25 and five hours of labor.\nAnd, save the pair of grease fires and some longer-than-expected cook times, it all went off without a hitch, which is remarkable since the last time I cooked for guests, my hamburgers were nigh inedible and two hours late. \nWhat was the secret to my success? Love. No, really. Using a lot of garlic to mask the cheap canned vegetables helped. Closely following my trusty cookbook was essential. The sage culinary advice of Mamma Zennie came in handy, too. But it was really just love that made my meal work. None of the dishes were particularly complex, I just had to take the time and overcome the daunting mountain of Thanksgiving dinner. \nA trailer park Thanksgiving\nI grew up in a household that valued good food. Most of my mother's pantry is filled with organic goods. Vegetables were always fresh and chemical free. Thanksgiving dinner cost about as much as a semester's worth of tuition, too.\nI can shop frugally at Marsh or Kroger, but to feed eight people on a shoestring budget, I needed help. So, I employed the help of my roommate, who has the proud distinction of having grown up in a trailer park.\nWhen I told him of my project, he answered ominously with a single word: Aldi.\nThat's right, to cook this cheaply, even Kroger brand is too pricey.\nSo cheap it's a Wonder\nTo cut prices even further, we went waaaay across town to the day-old bread store, at 3301 Indiana 37, for the bread stuffing. \nThe shop, which is officially called Wonder/Hostess, is an absolute haven for all the things that make American children obese. But it also has really cheap bread.\nTwo 2-pound loaves of industrial-size restaurant and hotel white bread and a dozen instant dinner rolls rang up at $3.28. \nCheap food, expensive shopping carts\nThe first thing to know about Aldi is that they charge a deposit of one quarter to take a shopping cart, and they don't have bags or baggers. These are all things that help save money, apparently. \nThe second thing to know about Aldi is that there is a lot of really cheap food. Canned vegetables: 34 cents each. Potatoes: 10 pounds for $5. \nAfter comparing prices, we realized that it would be far cheaper to roast two chickens than one turkey -- it would probably cook faster, too.\nPlus, Thanksgiving isn't just about turkey. A roasted and stuffed chicken can taste very similar.\nSo, for 45 cents per pound, I bought two approximately 5-and-a-half-pound chickens. \nAldi even had an aluminum roaster pan for about $2.50. \nIn the end, I bought everything I needed (minus some evaporated milk for the pie) for $21.74. \nThe Joy of Cooking\nI am no chef. I have done my share of experimenting in the kitchen, but only recently have I been able to turn an even remotely edible result.\nMy only guide in this endeavor was the 915-page 1975 edition of "The Joy of Cooking," which I only recently bought for about $30. It has descriptions of how to do just about anything and everything, from cooking road kill to setting a table for a seven-course meal. It is so all-encompassing that most chefs use it only as a reference. Referring to "The Joy of Cooking" for step-by-step instructions and recipes for cooking a basic staple like Thanksgiving dinner is about like using a hand ax to open a peanut -- it works but it's not as precise as you'd like it to be.
What are you, chicken?\nPreparing the chicken was far and away the most difficult part of the meal. The first stumbling block was thawing the damned things. When I bought them, they were frozen so hard I could have killed a man with them. What I didn't realize until it was too late was that it takes a lot of time to thaw 12 pounds of chicken, even if they're soaked in scalding water. That set me back at least an hour and a half. It is probably best to buy the chickens the day before and allow them to thaw in the refrigerator over night. Otherwise, they take about two to three hours of soaking in hot water to thaw entirely.\nStandard whole chickens come with the giblets still in the cavity of the bird. The heart, lungs and other innards must be removed by hand before the chicken can be stuffed -- same goes for a turkey. "The Joy of Cooking," with its Depression-era folksy charm, recommends saving the giblets for gravy. I elected not to do that based on the grossness factor.\nAfter removing the giblets, I washed the inside and outside of the chickens with cold water and patted them dry with a paper towel.\nI used a relatively simple dry stuffing recipe from "The Joy of Cooking." It calls to stuff the chicken half way, pour butter into the cavity then stuff it the rest of the way and add more butter. The excess butter that drips into the pan helps add flavor to the basting juices. Try not to pack the stuffing the bird. It will expand a bit as it cooks and the tighter the stuffing, the longer the chicken will take to cook, according to "The Joy of Cooking."\nWith the chickens stuffed and in the roaster pan, I followed "The Joy of Cooking's" chicken roasting recipe and placed them, covered, into an oven preheated to 450 degrees. \nAfter about 20 minutes, I turned the heat down to 350 degrees. \nThe chickens took about three hours to roast. I basted the chickens with the drippings from the pan every 15 minutes or so. After about two hours, I removed the lid and roasted them uncovered so the skin would turn golden brown.\nPoultry needs to cook for about 20 minutes per pound, until the inside is about 180 degrees and the center of the stuffing is about 165 degrees. Since I knew I would be using it again and since I didn't want to kill my guests, I splurged and bought a meat thermometer.
Burned alive\nI made up for the low quality of the corn, green beans and mashed potatoes by liberally applying butter, salt, pepper and garlic. Between the mashed potatoes and the green beans, I used an entire head of garlic. \nAs I was preparing to sauté the green beans in olive oil with garlic and onions, I happened upon the biggest potential catastrophe of the night.\nI made the mistake of preheating the pan on high. As I poured the olive oil in, it smoked and almost immediately caught fire. After I had smothered the fire with a lid and it was out -- like an idiot -- I added olive oil to the pan again before it was cooled and it again caught fire.
My favorite mistake\nTraditional pumpkin pie is so easy and so much cheaper to make that it doesn't make sense to buy a pre-made pie. \nIn my haste at Aldi, I accidentally bought two 9-inch graham cracker crusts. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, though, as my guests loved the new addition.
Just desserts\nAll told, I spent about six hours in the kitchen preparing the meal. But it was worth it. Now I know why my mother does it. In spite of the stress that it wouldn't turn out, in spite of spending six hours running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get everything in order, it was really nice to have seven of my friends, some of whom I haven't seen all semester, sit down and enjoy a meal I provided -- all for about $25.\nI worried about not having enough food, but after the dust settled, the eight of us hadn't even touched the second chicken and there were leftovers of every side dish.\nAnd it was good that I had seven friends who were then indebted to me, my kitchen looked like a hurricane had hit it -- quite literally every dish, pot, pan and utensil I owned was dirty. \nThough there was one unanticipated consequence of sharing Thanksgiving dinner with my friends in Bloomington -- my refrigerator is overflowing with blasted Thanksgiving leftovers.
