Normally it's my gg-grandmother's stuffing, but won't be doing it this year as there will only be 3 of us here. I imagine that Dave and his sister Lynn are in the process already in NJ. We used to spend a couple of days, at least. Up until a few years ago, there wasn't a written recipe; daughters learned it from their mothers. We just added stuff until it tasted right. Mom and I added a new tradition, encouraged by my dad. We would season it during the late morning, just before stuffing the bird, and dad would have popped the first bottle of champagne in time for us to sip as we seasoned - like clearing the palate - in reverse.
We would bake two loaves of cornbread at least a day early, so it would have time to dry out a little. About a day before, we would simmer the giblets; mom started adding a package of chicken gizzards to the turkey "innards" so the broth would be especially rich. We always simmered the turkey neck along with. Once the giblets were tender, we would slice them, then put them back into the broth to chill overnight. By morning, the stock would have congealed and would be all ready.
Sometimes we would chop the veggies the night before, but most often we did it during the morning prep. White onions, green onions, green bell pepper, and celery - at least a cup of each - about five cups total. They would be simmered slowly in butter. I used to wonder why my mom would take a stick of butter and place it into the very large and deep iron skillet, watch it melt, compare it to the bowl of chopped veggies, and finally, at some point, take out whatever had not melted. It turned out to be one of those things like cutting the ends off the ham (The roaster was too short). Fresh farm butter wasn't packaged into sticks, so there was no way to measure it. You just took a large glop and melted away the right amount. The chopped veggies were added to the pan, stirred into the butter, and the pan was covered so that the veggies would "stew" until they were tender and translucent.
Meanwhile. we would get one of the vegetable cooler drawers from the bottom of the fridge - we didn't have a large enough bowl - and crumble the cornbread, along with a few slices of "white" bread, and add the veggies and begin to mix them as one of us would pour in the slightly re-heated broth until the stuffing reached the desired consistency. About this time, Dad would pour the champagne, and we would start adding dried herbs: sage, rosemary, thyme, or a combination of sage and poultry seasoning. This was the critical part. Take a sip of champagne, taste the dressing, confer over what needed to be added: more herbs, salt, pepper, another sip, more of one thing or another. Then Mom would finely dice about a half an apple and add that, along with the minced meat from the turkey neck, and we would chop a sizable amount of fresh parsley, always tasting and sipping as we went. The oldest woman in the group would finally declare that it was ready, and we would stuff the bird with some of the mixture, and spoon the rest into a pyrex baking dish.The next step would be roasting the stuffed turkey. Once it was done, the rest of the stuffing would go into the oven along with the prepped sweet potatoes, and whatever. In the meantime, the giblet gravy would be prepared. Skimmed turkey fat and flour would be stirred together over the heat, in the same iron skillet that the veggies had stewed in. until it was a rich caramel brown. Then the juices from the bird and the rest of the giblet stock, along with the sliced giblets would be added. The addition of a little bit of salt and a good bit of black pepper would be done by the same consensus procedure of sipping and tasting until it was declared perfect.
My sister-in-law and I streamlined many of the steps and modernized some of the ingredients, but Dave and Lynn will have already begun a similar process which will go on through tomorrow morning in Dave's kitchen.
In a way, I'm kind of glad that Linda doesn't like to cook that much, and is bringing her broccoli/cornbread casserole, which will double as green veg and dressing.
A simple dinner of turkey breast, the casserole, butternut squash, and pumpkin pie.
A whole lot easier clean-up.
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