The plate shown is one we prepared and served for Thanksgiving dinner in Mike's truck in 2009.

You will see turkey, bread dressing, sweet potato casserole, steamed broccoli and cranberry sauce.

Vicki's mom says that this is one of the best brands of turkey available.

The meat was frozen when we bought it and we stored it in our ice chest until we were ready to cook it.

The "bird" was comprised of both white and dark meat. There were truly no bones. There was only one small piece of skin.

How were we going to cook it?

Mike is standing beside his truck with the hood up. He is pointing to the packaged turkey sitting in a pan on top of the engine.

It is certainly an unconventional method to use the engine's heat for cooking turkey (or any food) and additional measures (including taking the food out of the packaging) would need to be taken in order to make it work.

He does not recommend this method of cooking and knows that additional measures would need to be taken to make it work.

Mike is holding the boneless turkey -- still in its packaging -- up to the exhaust stack on the back of the tractor he drives for his trucking company, as if he were going to use this method for cooking turkey.

Although he does not recommend using it, he has no doubt that some adventurous truckers may have tried this method of using the truck's heat to cook or heat a meal.

In this photo, you will see the boneless turkey we bought -- out of its packaging and placed in a Reynolds slow cooker liner inside the crock pot -- prepared for cooking.

Per the instructions, Mike rubbed oil (olive oil, in our case) around the meat, which remained inside its fabric netting during the cooking cycle.

For our taste, Mike did not use the gravy packet that came with the turkey, partly because of the high sodium content.

Mike stretched a large rubber band over the top of the lidded appliance and around the knobs on the sides to keep the lid in place while he drove down the road.

This method of cooking turkey worked very well!

There wasn't very much broth, but it was enough to be able to make a one-loaf batch of bread dressing.

Unlike an "oven bag" (which is meant to be used in an oven), a crock pot liner is meant to be draped over the sides of the appliance after which the lid is put on.

By 12:30 p.m., the turkey was beginning to cook. Four hours later, we started to smell the luscious aroma of cooking turkey. Yum!

Both plates show a serving of turkey, bread dressing, sweet potato casserole and steamed broccoli.

The plate in the foreground also shows jellied cranberry sauce. You can see the edge of the bowl with jellied cranberry sauce on the right and the pan containing the remainder of the bread dressing in the background.

Money saving tip: Obviously, you can save money by eating turkey that you've cooked in your truck when compared to eating a restaurant meal. But both your money and your time are valuable. Using a crock pot for cooking turkey while you're rolling down the road makes sense compared to having to cook it once your vehicle is stationary.

With a little advanced planning, you can save on clean-up time, too. We were very familiar with using Reynolds Oven Bags for roasting turkeys in a standard oven. So we experimented and tried using a "slow cooker liner" for the first time ever when we cooked our 2009 Thanksgiving dinner.

Mike declared that using the slow cooker liner dramatically reduced clean-up time compared to what he would have spent if he had put the turkey directly into the crock pot without it. If you are willing to let your crock pot soak, either with or without additives to help clean it, you can save yourself the expense of slow cooker liners.

If you can, compare prices of similar turkey items at the stores. The least expensive one (overall or per pound) may not be the best value. Once, we tried a Jenni-O turkey that was on a really good sale; to our taste, it was so salty that it was practically inedible. You'll want to gauge which items to compare by the amount of storage room you have in your ice chest or compact refrigerator and the amount of cooking space you have in your appliance.

Finally, be aware of any drowsiness that may come on as a result of eating turkey. This meat has a high amount of tryptophan, an essential amino acid in the human diet which some people use as a sleeping aid. If you find yourself getting drowsy, find the nearest safe and legal place to park. It is better to park for a little while until the drowsiness passes than to risk getting involved in an expensive (and potentially life-threatening) accident.