The turkey ads showed up in my mailbox the other day. This week I can get a gobbler for 39 to 79 cents a pound, or even for free if I were to spend $100 at one store. Compare that with the $4.99-a-pound cost for the "heritage" (exotic breed) turkeys featured in a recent article in Pacific Northwest, the Seattle Times Sunday magazine. Author Lynda V. Mapes described supermarket turkeys as having "cottony meat" and as being "so blanderized by industrial-style production it can be like eating sawdust with butter." The chef of a renowned regional restaurant orders the heirloom turkeys each year, Mapes wrote. "Not just any bird, after all, would do for his nine-course holiday dinner that goes for $189 per plate and up, including wine." Last year's menu included a choice of poached white meat on king bolete mushroom bread pudding, confit of leg on mashed delicata squash with shallot, or herbed crépinette on cabbage with quince. Then there were the side dishes, like cauliflower fenugreek soup
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