I'm a single father and admittedly, not the greatest cook in the world. I learned a few recipes from my mom growing up, and picked up on a few things here and there over the years. With the busy schedules that we all have, it's hard enough to cook a meal every night, much less learn to make new ones. I've always gone to my parents house for Thanksgiving dinner, and my mother and sister are usually in charge of the cooking duties. My time on the big day is normally spent watching the Cowboys and making the occassional beer run. The company I work for hands out turkeys to all of the employees about a week before Thanksgiving. A few years ago, I decided I'd like to use mine to try my hand at making a fantastic meal. Oh sure, we'd still have the same T-day dinner we have every year, I intended on just using mine for lunches later that month (assuming I didn't burn down the house!) I got a recipe from a good friend of mine and, with some small tweaking, made an amazing turkey. If you're a first timer or just want to try an original recipe, you may want to give this one a shot.

The first thing you need to do is head to the store. Here's a list of things you'll need to pick up for your feast:

A turkey
Picking out a turkey can be confusing. Here's a tip. Buy 1 pound of turkey for each person you'll be having for dinner. So if you're having 10 people, buy a 10 lb. bird. This should account for leftovers. If you're not sure, it's always a good idea to go higher. If you think you may need a 10 lb. turkey but maybe more, get a 12 pounder. You don't want to run out on your big day, and leftovers are always awesome.
1 bulb of fresh garlic
2 stalks of celery
1 carrot
1 onion
1 large disposable pan
Get the biggest one you can find. It's not actually going to hold the turkey, but it needs to be BIG. I'll explain later.
Olive Oil
If for whatever reason you cannot use olive oil, you can substitute olive oil with butter. Make sure that you get non-salt butter though. Salt will dry out the turkey.
1 turkey roaster.
This one needs to be the size of your turkey. Make sure it can fit into a regular size paper grocery bag.
When at the checkout line, make sure you get all of your goodies in a large brown paper bag...i'll explain later.

Ok, so now that you have everything you need, let's move on. The first thing you need to do is thaw out the bird. I hope you're not reading this on the morning of your holiday! Put your frozen turkey in the refrigerator about 3 days before you plan on cooking it.

Make sure to get up pretty early on the big day. The turkey takes a long time to cook, and you've got a lot of preparation to do also. Unwrap your thawed turkey and take out everything that is inside. There should be a giblet bag and some other stuff in there. You may want to save some of this for gravy. Either way, make sure you gut the turkey completely. During this time, you should also start preheating your oven to 350 degrees F.

The next thing to do is to add the vegetables. This is pretty hard to mess up. The vegetables aren't actually going to be eaten, they're just for flavor. In fact, you're just going to toss them out once the turkey is done cooking anyway. Peel the garlic, the onion, and the carrot. Next cut the onion into 4 quarters, the garlic into two halves. Now chop the carrot and the celery stalks into little pieces. Take one half of the garlic and throw it in the trash. Smash up the other half into a garlic version of applesauce. You can do this by setting the garlic on the counter or cooking board and appliying pressure to it with a broad cooking knife, (or any other way you can come up with to smash something!) Now add all of the vegetables into the turkey. Just throw them in the same spot you took the giblet bag from.

Next on our list is to rub the turkey in olive oil. Just put the oil in your hands and carress the entire bird. Many will tell you to use butter. I assure you, you don't want to do this. Don't use ANYTHING with salt in it. Salt is the vicious enemy of a moist turkey. While I kind of prefer my meat a little on the dry side, most people don't. So unless you're absolutely sure that everyone at your house loves dry meat, stay away from the butter.

Once you've got the bird all oiled up, put it in the roaster. Next, slide the turkey and the roaster into the brown paper bag, and staple it shut. If you have a really big bird anod/or roaster, you may have to use two bags. If you're going to use 2 bags, slide one end of the turkey into one bag and then slide the other bag over the end of the bird sticking out, and staple the bags closed in the middle. The bag won't stick to the bird because of the olive oil carressing we did earlier. Now sprinkle the bag with water. Seriously...just a sprinkle. Run your hands under the faucet and just flick water on the top of the bag. This will allow for some of the steam to get out of the bag while cooking. Once your oven is heated, put the bag in. Place the large pan on the very bottom of the oven, and place the bird on the next rack up. The pan will catch the grease. And don't worry about the bag burning. Paper burns at 451 degrees, while we're only cooking at 350.

Now the waiting begins. You'll want to cook your bird for about 13 minutes per pound of meat. So if you decided on a 14 pound turkey, you will need to let it roast for 182 minutes, or about 3 hours. If you want to use a cooking thermometer, you can do that too. Just poke it through the bag and into the bird. Once it hits about 150-160 degrees, it's more than likely done. Once your time is up (or the thermometer says so) take the big bag out and get ready to feast.

That's it. This was the first recipe I've ever tried, and it's fantastic!