Ok! So you have your turkey and now you need to cook it! I really am of the thinking to keep it simple. 
First of all - keep your bird cold. If you bought a fresh turkey from us then put it in your extra fridge if you have one or in the back of your regular fridge. Setting it on the edge of the door where the warm air is going to hit it every time you open the fridge door is not good. It needs to be kept cold.  
The day you are cooking your turkey take it out of the fridge , place it in your sanitized sink, cut the plastic and run nice cold water over it. Take out your gizard etc and keep for gravy or discard. 
I have a roasting pan for turkeys that has a rack in the bottom but I did for years just set my turkey on a bed of onions if you like. It prevents it from sticking to the bottom - You will have to strain or use a hand blender to smooth out the gravy but it makes a tasty gravy .
I season my bird with a variety of dried herbs; sage, basil, thyme, salt and pepper. I also do the inside of the cavity. I do not stuff my bird. I like it to be cooked to just 155 internal temp. and if you stuff it  - it has to be 165. I find this over cooks the white meat. 
I do not baste my turkey, I cover it and go by the JD Farms turkey guide
http://jdfarms.ca/roasting-guide/


This   seems to work very well. I also  check my turkey about an hour before it is supose to be done as sometimes it seems to cook a bit faster. I pull it out at 155 internal temp. tent it over with tinfoil and make my gravy.  I also save ALL the carcass for soup - nothing better than turkey soup!

And that is my advice on - Cooking your Christmas Turkey!

Well is is that time of year again! I  know that even if you love Christmas  it is a busy time of year  when we all go crazy trying to get it all done in a timely manner. 
Personally I have tried to keep it simple. I have only a small family  gathering,  because we have the shop where we are so integral to everybody having the best Christmas dinner ever ;)  
~ and so for us smaller is better. 
I know that people have a  bunch of questions when it comes to turkey . How big, fresh or frozen, how long to cook and should I stuff it. Well  I will tell you what I like to do. If I am making a turkey then I like to have a bit bigger because if I am going to go to all the work of preparing one I want to make sure I have enough for two meals. So  my rule of thumb is one and a half pounds to two pounds per person. And please remember that turkeys were ment to be bigger animals, not small. So the smaller the bird the more bone to meat ratio you have, the bigger the bird (over 14 lbs) the more meat to bone ratio you have.  So lets say you have 6 people. I would go with a 12lb bird. If I have 10 people I would go with a 15-18 lb bird.  I want left overs!  Keep in mind who your eaters are as well. I've got a couple young men in the family who can eat a bunch more than my young ladies and myself.
So get your orders in for your fresh birds - Yes I do like fresh better. Once you've done fresh it is very hard to go back to a frozen bird. Why fresh you ask? Mostly because you do not know how long that bird has been frozen for. Randy worked in the grocery industry in his early meat cutting career and he said the birds would sometimes be almost 2 years frozen.... you know why they are on sale!
 So like I said - order today!! It  is amazing how quickly it sneaks up on us and you don't want to miss out on our lovely fresh, free run turkeys. I will go into the cooking of it next round. 
​Because ~ Christmas is coming!!