Are you stuffed?

[Jenise]

This morning I saw a video of William H. Macy complaining (not sure to whom, he was at a dinner table with others, probably on some movie set) about turkey stuffing. That he "waits all year" to finally eat stuffing and he doesn't want it adulterated with oysters or artichokes or olives or any of that stuff, "just give me the stuff out of the bag!".

And I have to admit: I relate. I've made it with sausage and with pecans and chestnuts and all kinds of things, but frankly, just give me the real deal with onions and celery and lots of sage and I'm happy. Macy's tantrum also made me realize that I'm having Thanksgiving dinner this year with a couple who don't like stuffing. I'm not sure either one has actually ever eaten it, but the one time I asked a few years back her reason for disliking it was "because there's too much rosemary in it." I think I'm going to make a little pot of it, bread pudding style and take that along. I didn't wait all year to have turkey and not have stuffing!!

How about the rest of you? What's in your stuffing?

I'm with you, Jenise. I prefer the "regular" bread stuffing, not cornbread, or stuffing with oysters, sausage, etc. And I also like gravy on it.

One Thanksgiving we were invited to a picky eater's Thanksgiving dinner for twenty people. He mentioned that he wasn't going to have gravy because he didn't like it. I finally convinced him that other people do, though, and that he should have gravy.

When we showed up, I discovered he had bought two 12-oz. jars of Heinz turkey gravy for the 20 guests. I sprang into action and made a large bowl of gravy from the roast bird. At the end of the dinner, there wasn't a drop left.

One thing I hate is sweet potatoes with marshmallows. Blech!

Oysters, no, but sausage, yes. Crispy greasy fennely peppery sausage goes great with sage! And, yes, I do sparkle it up with pecans and craisins, but those are mostly for show. Celery, onion, butter, sausage, and sage is what you mostly get.

Not a sweets / yam person here, either. Nor the soggy old green beans.

My wife and I started hosting Thanksgiving for both our families while we were still dating. Being adventurous eaters, we tried always try new ways for pretty much everything. For example, I don't think I've ever cooked pureed squash but do ginger glazed squash instead. Anyway, we found an interesting recipe for Sausage, apple, and cranberry stuffing that we tried. We loved it and cook it every year.

My wife's step-father is a very pedestrian eater. Hamburgers, PB&J, etc. That first year he didn't have the stuffing and every year after that we had to make "basic" stuffing for him which he ate and enjoyed. After about 10 or so years, he came up to me and said he tried the "other" stuffing and it was great! I don't know what made him try it. I suspect he far enough back in the buffet line that "his" stuffing ran out. We still made both stuffing after that but smaller amounts.

ETA: One other dish we made every years was a sweet potato casserole with pecan streusel topping. Think crust less pecan pie. Always a hit and people fight over who gets the leftovers.

I always make 2 pans of dressing (what we Southerners call it if not inside bird)
One with oysters, one "plain" (onions/celery/sage, no carrot). One pescevegetarian this year so the oyster one will use vegetable broth instead of turkey,
I like sweet potatoes in general, but not with marshmallow. Betsy's niece loves it, but they are having at a separate dinner Fri, so BIL doing a squash dish for tomorrow
Menu this year:
Chex mix, crudite with couple dips, sage/prosciutto/gruyere pinwheels (one roll without ham)
Heritage turkey with herb/mayo, Gabrielle Hamilton's pickled shrimp, the 2 pans dressing, gravy, ginger green beans, winter squash, apple/fennel salad.
There will be 2-3 pies but I don't care!

Growing up we always had traditional bread stuffing with Bell's poultry seasoning. And it went in the bird. That's still my preference in re stuffing.

-Paul W.

I like the old-fashioned stuffing, as well. It took me a few years to figure out how to cook Thanksgiving dinner without spending all day in the kitchen. I wanted to be with my family. I finally settled on a dressing which I made in the crock pot, from scratch. On Thanksgiving day, I heated it on low and finished it off. My secret: I took the turkey juice out of the pan using a turkey baster and added it to the dressing several times during the day. No one knew that, and I kept the secret because our granddaughter announced at eight years old that she would not eat anything that came from a critter that had a face. She loved the dressing and so did everyone else. I also saved chicken and turkey bones during the year, and made my gravy from scratch the day before. I use browned flour, and it was always well received. No more last-minute minute frustrating jobs.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, and I hope whatever you are doing, you are loving it.

I would never serve someone something that they chose ethically not to eat.
Of course I'm a bleeding heart

Jean and I both love stuffing, although Jean's gluten intolerant so we now make it with gluten-free bread. She grew up in an Irish-Polish Catholic household when even onions were considered a bit exotic (Jean's mother used the Joy of Cooking recipe for stuffing but omitted the onions, which is borderline sacrilege for me). This year we're also bringing over two trays of stuffing for a Thanksgiving dinner put on by the local transitional housing organization, and we'll be using the JoC recipe for that. I love stuffing in all its forms, with chestnuts or oysters. Mark Miller's chorizo corn bread stuffing is pretty awesome, too, but not really Thanksgiving fare.
Our Thanksgiving dinner this year will feature a roast D'Artagnan duck, sweet potato hash (marshmallow-free, I'm happy to note), gluten-free stuffing, cranberry-citrus relish (a Jane Brody recipe) and some biscuits for our son. My wine thinking is right now leaning toward a 2014 Charvin CdP, but we'll see what actually gets opened....

Mark, our preferred dressing has no onion! It does, however have a pound of shallots in it... It's an interesting recipe, you take good white bread, cut it up and stale it overnight, then add as much milk as the bread will soak up. The veggies are shallot, fennel bulb, and celeriac, so it also has no celery or carrots. Sauteed veg is added to the bread and that's roasted. Simultaneously traditional and non-traditional.

That said, I do love an oyster or sausage stuffing! But I'm the only one in our family group that does. So I've made them, entirely for myself, about once a decade. Oh, well.

That shallot dressing sounds good.

I also saved chicken and turkey bones during the year, and made my gravy from scratch the day before. I use browned flour, and it was always well received. No more last-minute minute frustrating jobs.

Yes! Yes! My TG day got much better as soon as I realized I could buy turkey wings a few days ahead in any grocery store, make the gravy ahead, and just focus on bird-and-dressing in the moment.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, and I hope whatever you are doing, you are loving it.

Best wishes to you and yours, as well!

I would never serve someone something that they chose ethically not to eat.
Of course I'm a bleeding heart

She was only eight years old Dale and allergies were not involved. A teacher had filled her students with a bunch of crap about killing animals for food. I do not believe in that type of teaching. Certain things should be left up to the parents to discuss with their children.
I had a lower-grade school teacher try to change my left-handed son into using his right hand. I was livid when he came home in tears and thought something was terribly wrong with him. That teacher got a lesson in life from my husband and I.

I had a lower-grade school teacher try to change my left-handed son into using his right hand.

School teachers still do that?? It was standard practice when my grandmother was growing up. She wound up being ambidextrous.

I'm left-handed except for use of a computer mouse. When my first workstation with a mouse arrived I deliberately used it right-handed. I did this for two reasons. First, so that when I visited a co-worker's cube I could use their computer without having to change the mouse settings. Second, using the mouse right-handed meant that my left hand was free to write things down on paper.

-Paul W.

In music, the symbols for using the right or left hand are respectively, m.d. (mano destra) or m.s. (mano sinistra). Interestingly, destra is the root of the word dexterous, while sinistra is the root of the word sinister. There was a time when left-handed people were looked upon with suspicion, hence the sinister connection.

I used to use a friend's computer occasionally and even though he was right handed he had the mouse on the left side. But what drove me crazy is that he didn't switch the buttons' functions.

[Jenise]

Walt, I agree with Larry--that dressing sounds fascinating. Would you please post the recipe?

And to everyone: Happy T Day! Hope yours has started out better than mine.

How about the rest of you? What's in your stuffing?

Our traditional family stuffing recipe was an oatmeal version derived from our Scots heritage, called skirlie and simliar to this recipe:

https://nicolestastingspoon.com/oat-stuffing-scottish-skirlie/

In music, the symbols for using the right or left hand are respectively, m.d. (mano destra) or m.s. (mano sinistra). Interestingly, destra is the root of the word dexterous, while sinistra is the root of the word sinister. There was a time when left-handed people were looked upon with suspicion, hence the sinister connection.

I used to use a friend's computer occasionally and even though he was right handed he had the mouse on the left side. But what drove me crazy is that he didn't switch the buttons' functions.

In Latin, dexter is right and sinister is left. Most Latinate languages retain those meanings to some extent. The historical bias against the left hand might have arisen from an early, pre-TP practice of wiping with the left hand.

I had a lower-grade school teacher try to change my left-handed son into using his right hand.

School teachers still do that?? It was standard practice when my grandmother was growing up. She wound up being ambidextrous.

They did that to my dad, too. And, dutiful boy, he wrote righty and did everything else lefty.

First, so that when I visited a co-worker's cube I could use their computer without having to change the mouse settings.

Heh. I recall once working with a fellow who set his keyboard to Dvorak but did not move the keytops. That was (briefly) entertaining the first time I visited him.

I had a lower-grade school teacher try to change my left-handed son into using his right hand.

School teachers still do that?? It was standard practice when my grandmother was growing up. She wound up being ambidextrous.

They did that to my dad, too. And, dutiful boy, he wrote righty and did everything else lefty.

First, so that when I visited a co-worker's cube I could use their computer without having to change the mouse settings.

Heh. I recall once working with a fellow who set his keyboard to Dvorak but did not move the keytops. That was (briefly) entertaining the first time I visited him.

I did something like that in college. I was concerned that I had to type in an admin password on a public terminal, so I had the program echo my keystrokes using different letters, figuring that people would be more likely to read what was on the screen than follow my fingers.

The historical bias against the left hand might have arisen from an early, pre-TP practice of wiping with the left hand.

That is the reason why in Indian dining etiquette food is eaten with the right hand only, never the left hand.

-Paul W.

Heh. I recall once working with a fellow who set his keyboard to Dvorak but did not move the keytops. That was (briefly) entertaining the first time I visited him.

In the '80s, I taught myself to type using the Dvorak layout. Wow, was it efficient. I had to give it up, though, because whenever I used another computer or typewriter, I got screwed up and couldn't easily switch back to QWERTY. It's a shame we didn't adopt Dvorak when we had the chance. Now it's too late.

IIRC all of the controlled studies done on keyboard layouts showed no significant advantage to Dvorak vs. QWERTY. Linotype typesetting machines used yet another keyboard layout--ETAOINSHRDLU.

Our compiler engineering group had engineers located in Moscow and Novosibirsk. The keyboards of their laptop computers of course had Cyrillic layout. There was some magic somewhere that allowed them to switch to QWERTY but I don't know what it was.

-Paul W.

I've read that typing speed contests were won by Dvorak typists, but I'm only the messenger here. I've also read stats that the distance moved by secretaries' fingers were 1/18 by using Dvorak. I do recall that when I used Dvorak my fingers would hardly move, and text would magically appear. I'm a fan, but Dvorak is out of step with the rest of the world.