Forget about the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Pearl City High School band members will be marching a different line when they show up that very same day at the Okinawan Center. And they won't need their instruments, either.
"We heard they were trying to raise money for the band so we said, if they volunteer, we'll donate some money," said A Catered Experience manager Ron Hattori. "So about a dozen band members will help load peoples' turkey dinners in their cars."
Every year, Island residents will take a short cut in preparing a holiday meal by ordering a complete turkey package for eight from A Catered Experience. Although some reheating is required, it still takes far less time than roasting a bird from its raw stage and also making all the trimmings.
"We sent out the reminders in September," said assistant manager Corinne Hokama. "Like last year, we're expecting about 1,000 orders."
In readying for the holiday deadline, a team of chefs and cooks will start chopping, dicing, stirring, whipping and baking four days outside of Thanksgiving Day.
"Not a problem," said Narcesa Fukuda. "We've done this for so many years that we know exactly what we're doing."
And that certainly helps when preparing a 1,000 hot-out-of-the-oven turkeys, and hundreds of pounds of stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy.
While the stuffing, gravy and mashed potatoes are prepared ahead of time, the turkeys don't make it into the oven until the eve before Thanksgiving Day.
Priced at $84.95, the family holiday dinner includes all the traditional fixings, including four pounds each of poultry gravy and real mashed potatoes; three pounds of stuffing; one pound of cranberry-pineapple relish; a dozen dinner rolls; and a whole pumpkin pie from Napoleon's Bakery.
Extra side dishes of stuffing ($7.50 for three pounds), gravy ($5 for 32 ounces), relish ($3 for eight ounces) and mashed potatoes ($5.50 for 32 ounces) can be purchased. Napoleon's pumpkin, custard and apple pies ($7.50 each), and dinner rolls ($4.50 for a dozen) are also available.
"The only side we don't do is rice," Hattori quipped. "But people can get that with their maki sushi rolls."
When placing your order, be sure to tell the staff the approximate time that you'll be picking up your meal. Pick-up times are between 8:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day at the Okinawan Center parking lot.
"It takes less than five minutes to get in and out with your turkey dinner," Hokama said. "It's just like going to a fastfood drive-through."
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