It's not too late! You can still make the best dressing for your Thanksgiving dinner that you ever put in your mouth. Okay, so I may be a bit prejudiced, but Thanksgiving without this dish just doesn't seem like a real Thanksgiving. Best part is that it is simple:
First, make up the cornbread:
1 cup of cornmeal (grind it fresh and it won't need sweetner!)
2 TBSP oil
1 egg
1/2 cup of CREAM
1/2 tsp baking soda
Heat your iron griddle and it's great if it has some left over grease in it (bacon fat works very well). Pour out as pancakes and when the pancake is set around the edges, flip. Should be golden brown in color. Set aside to cool.
Then chop up a stalk of celery and half an onion - chop them as fine as you can get them. Put them in a big ziplock baggie. Throw into the baggie 1 tsp poultry seasoning and 1 tsp sage, and lots of pepper, and some salt.
When bread has cooled, crumble it in the bag and mix thoroughly with the other stuff. Add in a few pieces of whole wheat bread crumbled also. My mom used white bread, but that stuff is nasty!
Now, let it sit all crumbled and mixed in the bag for a couple hours.
Grease a glass oven-proof dish and pour in the mixture. Now's the good part: as the turkey is cooking, just keep sucking up the drippings and drop them over the dressing until it is thoroughly drenched. Grease should be pooling on the top - that's the sign to stop adding it.
Now when the turkey comes out, slip it into the oven at 400 for 45 min or so until it begins to get brown and crunchy on top. Serve with more gravy on top of it!
(Good thing we ONLY eat this one day a year, eh?)
P.S. We sometimes cheat on Mildred and add in some garlic powder and Old Bay Seasoning. I don't think she'd mind TOO much.
3 comments:
That's bordering on soul food,,,,, especially the recurring theme of 'grease'. 8>)
What part of the Southland do you call home ?
My family has lived in Richardsville, VA for centuries. It's about half way between Fredericksburg and Culpepper but off the beaten path. Route 3 connects the two larger cities, and Route 610 forms a loop that goes into some pretty country just between the confluence of the Rapidan and Rappahanok rivers. That's where we're all from. My mother and father were both born there, as were their parents, as were some of their parents, etc.
Hey, hey, Cousin,,,,,
Ah'm from jest over the ridge from ya'll.
My two major paternal lines went into the mountains of East Tennessee in the late 1780's to get away from 'civilization' in Virginia and Maryland, where they landed early in the reign of William and Mary. One of them was a line of bastardy from William's Holland days, which prudence dictated he ship to the colonies,,, out of sight out of mind and all that. Let the painted savages deal with them.
They also were instrumental in founding the short lived State of Franklyn.
My great x3 grandfather Kaspar is the man running hunched over whilst carrying two wooden buckets of water to save the Dunkard Church in episode ? of the Civil War series.
A goodly line of my father's generation got out and eimigrated North for work in the early last century,,,,, and as has been observed by the family historian, the ones who stayed behind now have too many children and too few teeth.
In any event, though being brought up in the North, I was not raised with 'Yankeefied Ways'.
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