Make the Holidays More Simple – Order Thanksgiving Off the Internet
Posted by Keith Elder | Posted in Family, Food | Posted on 27-11-2006
Last year when Ellen and I moved into our new home we were excited to cook our first Thanksgiving meal in our new home. That was the general feeling until we spent ALL day in the kitchen preparing the meal. While the meal was excellent, it wasn’t worth a whole day of effort and roughly $300.00 of groceries. I vowed next year I wasn’t going to spend my day off cooking. There had to be a better way. I am a smart guy, couldn’t I figure something out? Turns out there are lots of ways to have a really nice Thanksgiving dinner without all the fuss. This year we ordered Thanksgiving dinner off the Internet and had it shipped all the way in from Dallas, Tx via Mr. Billy’s Cajun Market. The meal costs $129.00 and included all the sides (mashed potatoes, green bean caserole, etc). The meal we got was the Spicy Cajun Fried Whole Turkey Dinner.
The meal included:
- Spicy Cajun Fried Turky
- Green Bean Caserole
- Mashed Potatoes
- Crab Cakes
- Giblet Gravy
- Bread Pudding Pie
- Geaux Juice
- Crawfish etoufee
The package arrived very nicely packed via Fedex on Wednesday around 2:00 PM. Here are some pics we took as we unboxed it:
This is a picture of Mom and me. This may be her Blog debut, I’m not sure 🙂
How everything was packaged.
Everything unpacked.
After everything was unpacked we placed it in the fridge and then headed to town later that evening to get some items to round out the meal. Ellen made a strawberry cheescake and brocolli caserole, mom made a caramel cake and the dressing and Ellen’s mom brought a caserole dish. As you can see our cooking was really at a minimum this year. Besides putting the turkey in the oven and heating up everything it was relatively painless and I even got to watch a lot of football earlier in the day (always a plus). So how was everything? Honestly, if you had came over and eaten with us and I hadn’t told you, you would have never known we ordered it. As a matter of fact, we never told Ellen’s mom we ordered it and while she was somewhat in disbelief that I cooked crawfish etoufee, crab cakes and had a spicy cajun turkey fried for Thanksgiving, everything had a home cooked flavor. This was my first spicy cajun turkey and I don’t think I can have Thanksgiving without it again. The turkey was tremendous and easy to heat up, just 5 minutes per lb. All in all it was a great meal and no one killed themselves this year trying to cook.
Do NOT order from Mr. Billy’s Cajun Market! Last year, I placed an order and it was delivered on time. This year, either the company has fallen apart or something drastic happened to change the response and ability to deliver. My order was not shipped on time, then I received a call from “Elaine” stating the Tur-Duc-Hen Roll was either not available or might be and did I want a refund. After not being able to straighten out the confusion, I asked for a refund and wanted the status and tracking number for the rest of the order that was supposed to be delivered already. She told me she would check into it and call me back. That call never came so the next day, I called and spoke to “Elaine” again and asked for the status and tracking number. I also reminded her the order should have been received already. She again said she needed to check with someone else and would call me back. She did call back and provided a tracking number and the product was received the next day. The next day though, November 22nd, I found my credit card had been charged AGAIN for the Tur-Duc-Hen Roll instead of credited as a refund. On calling (long distance) November 23rd, there was no answer and calling the 800 number is a joke since all you get is some advertisement for a cruise. I sent an email and will keep calling but these problems are inexcusable.