A carry-home meal that's not a turkey.

Byline: BEST OF ... by The Register-Guard

Team Best of ... knows it's heresy - suggesting you let someone else cook your Thanksgiving feast. How fun could the holiday be if it lacked hours of angst about over- or undercooked turkey?

Can it really be Thanksgiving without at least one emotional kitchen-based meltdown?

Team Best of ... thinks it can, especially since one of our members spent a recent Thanksgiving in her garage (blame a remodeling project run amok) and weathered the holiday by ordering a fully cooked bird plus side dishes from a local grocery store. The resulting feast day became a hallmark of family relaxation and togetherness.

Better still, it didn't break the bank. Cooks who do the grocery shopping know that the price tag for such a meal can easily top $100. All that expense, followed by hours over the hot stove.

Sometimes, we just want the feast without the possibility of fiasco.

Local grocery stores will provide the whole shebang for between $28 and $79. Not quite as luxurious as a catered event, and the fully cooked food does require reheating. But that's a skill almost all of us possess.

For sheer bang for its buck, Team Best of ... likes Fred Meyer's Deluxe Turkey Dinner. At $50, it's not the cheapest option, but it's a boatload of food - a 10- to 12-pound turkey, 6 pounds of mashed potatoes, 4 pounds of stuffing, 48 ounces of gravy, 2 1/2 pounds of green bean and almond casserole, 15 ounces of apple pineapple cranberry sauce, dinner rolls, and apple or pumpkin pie.

That's a better deal than Albertsons' $54 feast, which includes the same number of items, but in smaller portions.

Both Albertson's and Fred Meyer offer a stripped down version: turkey, potatoes, stuffing and gravy for $35 and $28, respectively. But budget conscious team members preferred Safeway's holiday meal at $38 ($40 if you lack the store's club card) because it had all the trimmings- potatoes to pie - enough to feed six to eight.

Little Capella Market on Willamette Street sells no precooked turkey, but it does offer side dishes that appealed to the gourmets among us. But Team Best of ... bypasses all these fine repast options in favor of the holiday meal available at Market of Choice.

The reason: We're snobs about our turkey. We like thinking about our bird in its pre-holiday incarnation, with room to move in an outdoor pen as opposed to trapped in a cage for its short life, and not shot up with antibiotics.

Market of Choice gets its holiday turkeys from Shelton, a Southern California grower known for free-range birds. They come fresh, not frozen, and are cooked in Market of Choice ovens.

For that we're willing to fork over extra greenbacks. The meal costs $79.

The side dishes: apple, celery and sage stuffing; mashed potatoes with herb butter; gravy; maple glazed carrots and pumpkin pie.

For an extra $5, you can get spicy cranberry chutney or a cranberry orange relish.

Come Thanksgiving morning, when other cooks are yanking the giblets out of the bird, preheating the oven and wondering where they stashed the turkey baster, we'll be sleeping late, our easy holiday meal no dream.

For a cornucopia of plenty, try our tasty Best of ... archive at www.registerguard.com/bestof.

BEST PLACE TO GET A FULL-MEAL TURKEY DEAL

Market of Choice

Eugene locations: 1960 Franklin Blvd., 687-1188; 1060 Green Acres Road, 344-1901; 2858 Willamette St., 338-8455

CAPTION(S):

Shelton's free-range turkeys are one of the main reasons the Thanksgiving meals from Market of Choice rule the roost.