Ok, Eve, if you are bound and determined, here's my take -- I've probably cooked about a dozen Thanksgiving dinners at my house...
The night before I am cooking, I mix up the stuffing with everything but what you will moisten it with -- I use chicken broth, and I've experimented with everything from cranberry and walnut stuffing to oysters to orange and pecan once... The main ingredients are the bread cubes (or stuffing in a bag), celery, onion, whatever you choose to season with, and then your liquid. If you are stuffing the turkey it will take longer to cook, so keep that in mind --
I also carefully split the skin from the breast on the top of the turkey and take bay leaves, rosemary, or whatever other fresh herbs I have around that seem poultry oriented and make designs between the skin and the flesh. I've used orange rinds in it as well, peeled in a circle off the orange, to make neat patterns and designs. After I put the designs in, I take a melted stick of unsalted cream butter and pour it between the skin and the flesh.
In the morning I mix up the liquid with the stuffing, pop it in the bird and then use the little turkey tying things -- they look like needles with an eye on the end, and string threaded thru them and the name escapes me -- to seal up the butt end of the bird. Then I fold the legs up, the wings over and secure this to the flesh -- you don't want the pieces flapping around loose in the oven or they will burn before the turkey is done. I also use the string hook things to seal up the top of the bird too.
Since the butter is already in there I dont baste initially, I pop the bird in on a fairly high temp -- 425 or so -- uncovered in a big roasting pan (I like aluminum disposables, you can toss the mess out) -- and as soon as the flesh starts to crisp, I tent it with aluminum foil, turn the oven down to 350 and leave it in there until it's within about 5-10 degrees of being done with a meat thermometer --
I do baste with the pan drippings throughout the cooking, and then when it is nearly done, I pull the foil tent off, turn the oven back up and let it brown and crisp outside for the last bit while it's getting to temperature.
I also make gravy with the drippings after the turkeys out of the oven and cooling down enough to carve, but this is long enough and you didn't ask about that lol... good luck with it -- it's not hard to do, if you have enough oven space to cook other things with it, and you put some thought into the order that you can prep stuff so you don't end up with too much to do at the last minute
