During the past year we have supped on hoity-toity dishes like “Curried Cauliflower with Mango” and “Grilled Sea Scallops with Peach and Papaya Salsa.” All good dishes of course, but now it's Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving is no time for experimentation with trendy ingredients.

I patiently wait each year for Thanksgiving to arrive because to me, it is like having dinner with a trusted friend. That old fellow that you only see once a year, but each time the embrace is warm and the lively conversation peppered with memories of Thanksgivings past.

I rarely eat turkey on any other day of the year. It is my spoiled belief that to truly savor the beauty of a golden-skinned, moist turkey, once must do so on the one day of the year in which turkey is the indisputable king of the table. While “Black-bean and Turkey Quesadillas with Smoked Cojita Cheese” may in fact be quite a good Summer snack, the experience is just not the same as tucking into a turkey surrounded by glistening red currants and presented on the family’s heirloom china on a cold, November evening.

Because I hold the Thanksgiving turkey in such high regard, I find it only fitting that Mr. Tom be the main character in this story -- the tale of my pursuit one year to fetch the family’s holiday meal.

One reads all sorts of proclamations in newspapers and food magazines this time of year as to what makes the best turkey: Organic, Free-Range, Frozen, Fresh, Young Hen, Butterball or Basted. Frankly, as one whose turkey taste buds are well honed, I don’t think that there is much of a difference in the taste between any of the aforementioned birds. I am sure that I am in for criticism from the various turkey camps who think that since their birds roam free and peck at dandelions that they taste better. I beg to differ.

There is however, a difference in the breed of turkey you choose -- a difference between the gobbler that runs wild through the forest and the more docile turkey who sits in a protected barn. Trust me, I know.

A few years ago, I decided to attend an annual event put on by friends, the “Linda and Lou Houck Annual Turkey Shoot.” In fact, there was no shooting involved. It was a cold-hearted, knife to the throat, turkey killing adventure.

In the late 1970’s, Linda and Lou migrated to the Northwest from upstate New York where their families had lived for generations. Linda and Lou had lived in an area that is isolated and rural, far from the concrete expanses of lower Manhattan. In the winter, driving a few miles to town can be an arduous task. Their lifestyle dictated that they had to raise many of their own provisions, canning fruits and vegetables in the summer in anticipation of a hard winter in which snow would cover the fields for literally the next six months. The winds of Autumn were the call for hunting and bird shooting to stock the freezer with game and fowl in store for the hard freeze that waited.

The Houck clan brought their life of hunting and gathering to Washington state, including their string of wild turkeys. They were a gangly band of birds that Lou had raised from eggs he got from a fellow New Yorker who raised a breed of wild turkey.  When Linda and Lou moved to the Northwest, the name of the annual turkey shoot lived on, albeit in a different form.

Wild turkeys are found in all the lower 48 states and are rumored to be found in Hawaii. There are a number of different breeds, but all wild turkeys are distinguished by their dark golden brown feathers, long legs and tall bodies, and colorful heads. Farm-raised turkeys have white feathers, short legs and plump breasts. The spurs on their feet and the points of their beaks are shaved off to eliminate any sharp points which could hurt the turkeys as they try, in vain, to strut around their restricted pens.

The picture of claiming the Thanksgiving turkey that you have framed in your mind is quintessentially American -- a group of friends, hot buttered rum in hand, gathered round the fire sharing tales of the day’s turkey shoot. That picture inspired me to traipse off to Linda and Lou’s farm for our Thanksgiving bird.

We gathered at their small farm on a typical Northwest day early in November -- wet, wet, wet. The legends you have heard about the weather in the Northwest are true. It rains. A lot. I have lived here 45 years and no, you do not get used to it.

Aside from the Douglas Fir trees, ferns and moss plants which drink up thousands of gallons of cool forest rain, I don’t find many other creatures, much less humans, who consider the rain beautiful. The rain soaks everything, including turkey “shooters.” Gloves, hats, coats and down through your boots. Everything is soaked. And when it is wet, pure virgin wool socks do not smell wonderful when hung in front of a crackling pine fire.

This year, Lou had 6 birds ready for the table, one young male bird and five hens. The other two birds in the group would be spared, old “Tom” whose days of making baby turkeys had passed and “Penny,” mother hen of the birds slated to meet their maker that day.

We drew straws to determine who would have first crack at choosing their turkey. When it came time for me to choose, three hens and the lone male remained. By now the remaining turkeys were on to us. They had witnessed and heard what was going on up the hill behind the barnyard -- a ruckus of cackling and flying feathers that did not bode well for the victims still waiting to meet their fate. Needless to say, the birds were skittish and doing everything they could to escape through the rickety chicken wire pen that Lou had haphazardly constructed.

Lou and I entered the pen. I chose the male turkey with the thought that he was bigger than the hens and thus, had more meat. He proved to be fighter, flapping his nearly six foot wingspan, and striking out with his razor sharp spurs in an attempt to flee my grasp. Lou and I wrestled the turkey into submission and carried him up the hill. I led with a vise-grip on the turkey’s neck, Lou behind him with the turkey’s legs firmly underneath his arms.

When we reached the top of the hill, we tied the turkey to a makeshift medieval gallows that Lou had fashioned out of a rusty old kid’s playset, swings and slide removed. We secured the turkey’s legs with a rope and lashed it over the top bar of the swingset. A green, canvas tarp from the Army surplus store served as a backdrop to shield the horror of what was to come from those too squeamish to harvest a turkey themselves. Another tarp was placed beneath the swingset in order to keep the green grass below from showing any evidence whatsoever of what would take place.

Within seconds of tethering the turkey he went into a sort of daze, his wings hung limp from his sides and all struggling had ceased. I suppose the blood rushed to his head and put him into a turkey trance. It was time for me to take over. Lou handed me what appeared to be the oldest, dullest, most ineffective knife I had ever seen. He assured me that this knife, which had seen him through numerous whitetail deer hunts and treed ‘coons, would do the trick sharply and swiftly.

I shall spare you the details of what took place next. Suffice it to say that it was fast. Thank God for both the turkey and myself. As a child I had harvested chickens in a similar manner and they had not gone quickly. After wielding the hatchet they had taken a romp around the barnyard before flying up to poultry heaven.

Now it was time for the real dirty work to begin, dressing the turkeys. And I don’t mean putting bread inside of them. (As an aside, the two terms “dressing” and “stuffing” are not used properly in most circles. “Stuffing” is what is put in the bird, “dressing” is cooked separately from the turkey.)

We trudged up to another small barn on the property that Lou had built on stilts. Outside, next to the barn, Lou had filled an empty, 50-gallon oil drum with hot water. It sat on metal frame that lifted the barrel about two feet off the ground. Under the barrel was a propane tank that was spewing out a raging flame to keep the water boiling. The contraption looked a lot like what we know today as deep-fat turkey fryers.

Before entering the barn we dunked our turkeys in the hot water. Not once but about 10 times to insure that the bird was fully soaked. Hot water acts to seal the bird’s skin and loosen its feathers, making the act of plucking feathers much, much easier. Some turkey hunters eschew this step totally, preferring to skin the bird, feathers and all. What a travesty, the skin of the turkey, crisp and golden, is delicious, and without it a turkey would be naked and embarrassed to be on the table.

Inside the barn, a long table hewn from fir trees took up the center and breadth of the entire room. Under the auspices of Lou and Linda, we set out to pluck the feathers off our birds. The first step was to remove the “beard”. A prize saved by wild turkey hunters, the beard is a wisp of wiry feathers that falls from the breast of male turkeys. A long “beard” attests to both the age and the virility of the turkey. Next came the removal of the long wing feathers. One uses the utmost care when taking the wing feathers because they fetch a premium price from fishermen who use them to hand-tie fly patterns in the hopes of landing a record cutthroat trout. The final step was to eviscerate the bird, a fancy term that means “taking the guts out.”

Farmers and hunters waste nothing and once the liver, heart and gizzard were removed, we rinsed them off in clean water and put them into bags for safekeeping. These delicious turkey parts would add an element of texture and flavor to our cornbread dressing.

At this point, one cannot place one’s previously squawking turkey in the fridge. Freshly harvested animals and birds must be “hung” in order to cool the carcass and meat before it is refrigerated or bacteria in the meat could multiply and be anything but hospitable to your guests. My turkey would hang in the cool air of the barn for the next 4 hours while we went off to the main house for a lunch of wieners, sauerkraut and beer.

I awoke Thanksgiving morning with the anticipation of a glorious day in the kitchen preparing dressing and baking desserts. I was planning a momentous Thanksgiving this year, roasting an impressive wild turkey that I had harvested with my own hands.

One of my biggest culinary mistakes happened that day. I assumed that a wild turkey should be cooked like his cousin who came out of the meat case at the supermarket. Wild birds are lean; they are on the run literally day and night. With nary a glob of fat under their skin, wild birds cannot be cooked for the same time per pound as their store bought brethren. In fact, you would be advised to cook a wild turkey for about half the time on the roasting chart for a regular turkey.

Since my turkey was nearing 13 lbs., I assumed the normal time of around five hours of roasting would do the trick. I put the bird in the oven and retired to a lounge chair for an afternoon of football, potato chips and snoring.

When the timer went off, I raced to the kitchen with glee that the moment had finally arrived, time to taste the turkey I had taken with my own hands.

As I pulled the roaster out of the oven, the glorious turkey was just as I had imagined, a deep, mahogany color with crisp, crackling skin. The aroma of the turkey had a slight scent of the damp forest that surrounded Lou’s farm. This would be a mighty tasty Thanksgiving bird.

The table was set with family heirlooms we had taken from the bank: the sterling silver, linens, salt and pepper wells, hand-written place cards and my father’s annual treat for everyone --chocolate turkies from See’s Candies.

I carried the regal bird to the table on a heavy silver platter that was nearly twice the size of the turkey and gently placed the attraction at the head of the table. Now was the real moment of truth, to slice into the turkey using Grandfather’s coveted carving knife with the mule deer antler handle.

The first clue that something was amiss happened when I made the first cut. Normally one has to use a little effort to separate the leg and thigh portion from the body of the turkey. This allows for the next cut, a slice parallel to the body of the turkey at the base of the breast, followed by vertical slices of the breast meat.

As I dug into the thigh joint with the knife, the whole side of the turkey crumbled and small shards of dark meat spilled onto the platter. Oh well, maybe I got it a tad bit overdone but I am sure the rest of the turkey, the white meat, will be just fine.

Now that was a stupid assumption on my part. The dark meat, the joints of a turkey, cook slower than the more lean white meat on the turkey’s breast. So if the dark meat had literally fallen off the bone after a gentle nudge from the knife, it was a sign that the breast was most likely incredibly overcooked. So much so, as it turned out, that the dream of supping on wild turkey breast was reduced to the horror of seeing that the breast meat had actually cooked away into a sort of white turkey dust. There was, in front of my eyes, nothing more than a few dried leathery strips of what had been the bird’s most succulent morsels of meat.

Now before you venture off into the woods to wring the neck of your turkey, sit down with a hot cup of coffee, a yellow legal pad, a calendar and a sharpened number two pencil with a good eraser. A successful Thanksgiving dinner on the table takes planning and organization. Don’t leave things until the last minute or you’ll forget to whip the cream, the parker house rolls will be cold and the Jell-O salad will need another hour to get out of its frozen mold.

Some cooks prefer to prepare their Thanksgiving dishes in advance, sometimes days before the Holiday. Pie crusts can be made and formed into their shells and then frozen. At the last minute the pumpkin filling is poured in and the pie popped into the oven for baking.

Personally, I plan and organize a little differently, but I leave all of the cooking to the morning of Thanksgiving. I may spend hours pouring over the slate of recipes that will be prepared, and then more time writing out the shopping list. I intensify my planning when it comes to scripting out what needs to be done when. I go into incredibly minute detail-“put water in saucepan at 3:00p.m., bring to a boil, add green beans, reduce heat to low, cook two minutes, drain, place in silver vegetable server, top with butter, sprinkle with previously toasted almonds.”

But to me, cooking pie ahead of time falls short of my vision of the memory of Thanksgiving. Sure, having a frozen pie crust on hand saves time, and usually leaves you with a soggy crust. Oh how rich it is to wake at 4:30 a.m. and start the sausage and giblets off in a hot frying pan swimming with butter then tossing the scrumptious meats with cubes of crusty sourdough and stuff it into that big, fat turkey. It is satisfying to know that everyone else is sleeping while you are singing away in the kitchen making them a special dinner.

Now that the recipes are decided let’s turn our attentions to how we are going to cook our turkey.

Weber tells you to “grill” or “smoke” a turkey out on the patio, Farberware tells you to use an electric turkey roaster, the Italians say put the turkey on a spit in front of an oak fire. The current rage is to immerse a whole turkey into a vat of hot fat and deep-fry the bird -- a terribly unsafe method (if the towering flames I saw on the consumer reports segment of the local news the other night are anything to go by).

They are all perfectly appropriate methods for cooking turkey on this day. However, the simplest method is the cleanest and the most effective: place the turkey on a rack which is placed in a heavy roasting pan. Put the roasting pan with the turkey into the oven and let it go. A few hours of smelling the sweet aroma of roasting turkey and voila, you will draw a spectacular turkey from the oven all golden and glistening with juices.

Now, on to our second point. During the roasting of the turkey there are a few critical details to attend to.

There are advocates on both sides of the turkey fence who argue as to the virtues of basting. My Mother used to drape her turkey in a wrap of cheesecloth. The turkey looked like a sort of Egyptian God swabbed in sacrificial linens.

Mother basted the turkey with cup upon cup of melted sweet butter. As the butter oozed over the skin of the turkey, it created a sheath of air between the meat and bird, a moisture lock that kept the meat moist and skin crisp. The butter seeped down into the bottom of the roasting pan, swirling into the pan juices and turkey broth creating the base for decadently rich turkey gravy.

I follow Mother’s example and baste my turkey. Instead of butter, I used good quality chicken stock, basting the turkey about every 30 minutes during the cooking process. Beware though of those cheap plastic turkey basters you find in the kitchenware’s section. Even a slight slip of the wrist and the tip of that plastic baster will hit the side of a hot oven and you will find yourself with a melted turkey baster good only for the garbage can. Buy a baster with a glass or metal tube and heavy-duty rubber bulb.

Why with all these gorgeous pan juices would you buy an envelope of powdered gravy mix? Gravy is not your enemy. Like cooking turkey, preparing gravy is terribly simple. But one small mistake in what is a simple recipe will result in gravy clouded with lumpy clods of flour and a gluey taste.

After the turkey is pulled from the oven, pull the roasting rack cradling the turkey out of the roasting pan. Leave the turkey on the rack. Place a large plate under the turkey to collect any juices that run from the bird. Let the turkey rest at least 15 minutes to allow the juices to absorb into the meat. While the turkey naps, make the gravy.

Again, when it comes to gravy I break with convention. Any gravy recipe will tell you to pour off most of the fat from the roasting pan, reserving just a few drops of the fat in the pan. Why would anyone cast off that fat and juice that had taken hours to work itself into such a precious elixir?

Place the roasting pan, and all of the pan juices and fat, over two burners on the stovetop. Heat the burners to medium-high and bring the fat to a boil. Now instead of “deglazing” the pan at this point, stir in some flour. Whisk the flour with the juices to create a dark, mahogany “roux,” that classical French term that defines a base for sauces. Once the “roux” is thick and gooey, add your favorite liquor. Fortified wines like Brandy, Madeira or Sherry makes sweet gravy, Bourbon adds a twangy Southern accent.

Continue to cook and stir the gravy while slowly adding the turkey stock that you made from the giblets the day before (or use chicken stock).

Is there a special trick to clod-free gravy? No. Just before service pass the gravy through a fine sieve to filter out the lumps. Strainers are not a cop-out. They are designed to help aid you in presenting a silky-smooth gravy on Thanksgiving.

On that fateful Thanksgiving day when I proffered up a wild turkey, to the credit of the family and friends invited to the table, no one winced or even said anything about what I deemed the most horrific turkey anyone had ever laid eyes upon.

We proudly passed the silver tray around the table and every single person took a helping of the dried-out, overcooked, hapless turkey. Plates were filled with heaping portions of mashed potatoes, rivers of gravy, mountains of dressing and Brussels sprouts.