I've pretty much given up actual cooking. I played around in that area for a time but I just don't have the patience for it. While dicing onions, my mind kept wandering to the script I needed to finish, the calls I needed to make, etc. There is a great pride in creating something in the kitchen but there's also the good feeling that comes from getting your professional work done sooner. So I'd find myself thinking: "Hmm…I could spend the next hour making this chicken dish…or I could call Fu's Palace to deliver their far superior Sesame Chicken and use that hour to finish Groo." So when food is prepared by me down there these days, it's usually a matter of microwaving, reheating or — if I'm feeling adventuresome — mixing two ingredients and then microwaving or reheating. And oh yeah, sometimes I boil pasta or cook rice in chicken broth but all in all, Wolfgang Puck is not staying up late sweating the competition.
My current favorite easy-to-make entree — and I could probably cook all day and not make something a third this tasty — is the Jennie-O Turkey Pot Roast. It's a big hunk of dark meat turkey that has been slow-roasted in some way that makes it surprisingly juicy and tasty. One yields enough meat to last me from 6-8 meals, most of which are sandwiches. If you were a better cook than me, as you probably are, I'm sure you could think of a thousand ways to mix shredded turkey with other items and make something even more wonderful…but just the turkey itself is wonderful enough for me.
Here's how you make one. You unwrap the package. The turkey sits in a plastic pouch in a plastic tub. You take the turkey out of the plastic pouch and put it into the plastic tub. You put the plastic tub into the microwave and cook it for ten minutes. When it's done, you remove and discard a large bone. I use a pair of tongs to do that, then I use the tongs to shred some of the turkey into smaller hunks.
That's it. You're done. Start eating.
Sounds easy, right? There's got to be a catch, right? There is. It's not always easy to get your hands on a Jennie-O Turkey Pot Roast. They make them in two versions, only one of which you can buy to prepare as above. The other version is sold to supermarkets which heat them up and stick them in the same shelves as the rotisserie chickens they cook on the premises. Jennie-O doesn't seem to have wide distribution that way and it isn't the best way to get this product. They sometimes sit around for hours in those displays and you can never predict when one will be available.
Much better is the heat-it-yourself-at-home version I get, which you can keep in your refrigerator and prepare whenever the mood strikes you. It's a great "emergency" dinner because you can decide to make one at 7:00 and be eating fine turkey by 7:15…and they're much better when they're freshly heated for the first time since they left the Jennie-O plant. So where do you get one? Well, this is a Tale From Costco, remember? There's your first hint.
For a while, I bought them at the Costco in Inglewood. I go there about once a month so each visit, I'd buy four and ration them one per week. They go for $3.39 a pound and they average about three pounds apiece. So figure ten bucks each. They're very handy when you're working all day and suddenly it's 10:30 and you remember you haven't eaten and need dinner in a hurry. Anyway, last visit to that Costco, they didn't have any so on Saturday, Carolyn and I went to the Costco in Los Feliz where I hoped they'd have a supply because I was fresh-out. Alas, none were to be found there either, leading me to fear they were off the Costco radar. Yesterday morning, I called the Jennie-O company and asked a nice lady where, besides Costco, I could buy them. She told me, "Nowhere. We only make those up when Costco orders them from us." She couldn't tell me if Costco was still ordering…
…so I called Costco HQ where an equally-nice lady searched her computer and told me, "Inglewood no longer stocks them…Los Feliz doesn't seem to…but they should have them at the Culver City location." Guess where I went yesterday. And even though I was in a Costco last week and another one on Saturday, I still managed to prove the old adage that it's impossible to go into a Costco and just get one thing. In addition to four Turkey Pot Roasts, I also bought a chicken-and-mushroom thing that looked interesting, the new Marlo Thomas book, a three-pack of Lysol, two cases of canned cat food for the menagerie out back, a box of Rubbermaid food storage containers…and a barbecued chicken. There was no duel-to-the-death this time for the barbecued chickens.
I have no idea if the Costco near you stocks the Jennie-O Turkey Pot Roast but if it does, I suggest you try one. My life is so unpredictable at times that I need to always have something in the refrigerator that I can prepare in a hurry. This is the best quick entree I've ever found and I'm hoping to start a run on them so Costco will continue to have the Jennie-O folks make them up.