Sorry, I forgot to answer this part of your post.
The cook from frozen bird takes away the need for it to sit days taking up valuable fridge space defrosting. It's already brined so all you have to do is take it out of the wrapping, put it in the roasting pan and brush some oil on it and stick it in the oven. The wrapper says it takes about 4 hours to bake, mine took 5 hours probably because different ovens vary in temp.
It turned out with golden crispy skin and juicy meat. The only thing I missed was it doesn't come with giblets which I like to use for gravy (but not that big a deal).
It was a pretty big turkey for just the two of us but DH is excited about the leftovers so that might not be an issue in the end.