Susan Mitsunaga hadn't enjoyed Thanksgiving in years — until last year, when she decided to break with tradition and — horrors! — buy her turkey dinner to go.

Mitsunaga is a care-home nurse who often has to work holiday shifts. Her husband is a plumber who always seems to get called out on Thanksgiving. Their three children aren't old enough to be of much help in the kitchen, and her mom, who lives with them, is growing frail.

"I love to cook and if I had a couple of days off, I would love to make the whole thing from scratch. But it just seemed like I was killing myself trying to bake the pies ahead, calling home during the day to make sure my husband didn't forget to put the turkey in the oven, rushing home to finish the dinner and then all those dishes!"

Then she noticed that the deli at her local Safeway was offering complete turkey dinners for less than $50. "I told my husband, 'That's it!' He said OK, so long as I made rice. He doesn't like mashed potato," she said with a laugh.

Mitsunaga said the hardest thing about Thanksgiving the turkey-to-go way was getting over the guilt. "My mother always made everything from scratch and I feel bad that I can't do that. But I just had to think about what Thanksgiving is about — family, spending time together. And it was no fun if I was in the kitchen the whole time and all tired and grumpy."

Mitsunaga and her family are part of a growing trend, according to hotels, caterers and restaurants that offer turkey-to-go service.

Kelvin Ro of three-year-old Diamond Head Market & Grill said his Thanksgiving Day dinners sell out well in advance and he's been forced to increase the number of orders he takes every year. Though he didn't begin taking orders until last month, customers started calling in February, he said. The Monsarrat-area takeout market will do 140 dinners this year, requiring his small staff to organize the prep like a military campaign.

"We start a week before. There's a production schedule for every dish that tells us what gets prepped that day, what gets cooked that day, what gets packaged," said Ro. "Everything is from scratch, we don't use any frozen material or processed stuff, so it's just like you would make it at home."

Well, maybe not just like home, when you consider that they're chopping herbs by the pound and potatoes by the bushel.

Like most turkey-to-go operations, Diamond Head Market's meals are cooked, then cooled and refrigerated, so customers are warned to give themselves an hour and a half or so to warm up everything.

At Creations in Catering at Dole Cannery, president Mike Rabe says turkey-to-go is clearly an increasing trend. They're doing 300 turkeys this year and will sell out, as most operations do.

"There are fewer people who are cooking at home and it seems as though they'd rather spend their time at the beach or with family than in the kitchen," he said.

Pacific Beach Hotel, which has been preparing turkeys to go for more than 10 years, has capped orders at 500, said senior catering sales manager Risa Meyers. "We want to keep the quality and that's a level we feel comfortable with. We always sell out and we still get a lot of calls," she said, noting that turkey-to-go customers come from all over the island and many are repeats. These regular customers get a flier reminding them to order early and a few dollars off if they call in by a certain date.

A trend within the trend is the piping hot turkey. Rabe said Creations in Catering does a limited number of these and people really like the idea; they charge an extra $10 for the hot bird and people are happy to pay it. Chilled turkeys take time to reheat, he said, and some customers don't even want that much work or hassle. "They don't want to do anything — they just want to take it home and have dinner."

Turkeys are notoriously easy to overcook and dry out, and Rabe said a challenge for caterers is teaching consumers how to finish the bird without finishing it off. His chef used to remove the pop-up thermometer in the turkey that indicates doneness but Rabe suggested leaving it in, so people don't reheat turkey for too long. "We want our product to be as if our chef had served it himself, but once they pick it up, it's out of our hands," he said.

Ironically, a spokeswoman for the Butterball Turkey Talk-line says that it might be safer to buy a piping hot turkey, so long as you go from pickup to table within two hours. If you choose a hot bird, she suggests, wrap it in heavy-duty foil and then in beach towels or blankets. It will stay safely hot for two to three hours.

Chilled turkeys must be fully reheated — to 145 degrees, which might dry out the white meat.

Unless otherwise specified, turkeys are in the 10- to 12-pound range (precooked weight) and meals are serve 6-8. If you want second servings of sides, order extra. Most operations require full payment in advance and some have order deadlines and restrictive cancellation policies; be sure to ask. Pickup is on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 24.