To kick off our series of Thanksgiving posts I am updating an earlier post and issuing a challenge to all of you urban farmers, courageous cooks, and foraging folk. I’m challenging you to stuff your turkey before you slaughter it. If you build your pen and get your live turkey now you should have enough time to prepare it for Thanksgiving. If you have what it takes we’d love to hear your story, shake your hand. and try your turkey dinner. And don’t forget to take pictures!

To Fatten a Turkey, Make the Dressing, and Roast It.

Get your turkey six weeks before you need it; put him in a coop just large enough to let him walk, or in a small yard; give him walnuts – one the first day, and increase every day one till he has nine; then go back to one and up to nine until you kill him, stuffing him twice with cornmeal dough each day, in which put a little chopped onion and celery, if you have it.  For the dressing use bread, picked up fine, a table spoonful of butter, some sage, thyme, chopped onion, pepper, salt, and the yolks of two eggs, and pour in a little boiling water to make it stick together; before putting it in the turkey pour boiling water inside and outside to cleanse and plump it; then roast it in a tin kitchen, basting all the time.  It will be splendid, served with a nice piece of ham and cranberry sauce.*

*From Helen Evans Brown’s West Coast Cook Book (p. 304).  She quotes the recipe as being “from the first Los Angeles Cook Book” .  I believe she is referring to How We Cook in Los Angeles, published in 1894