Thanksgiving Recap--The Stuffing Saga

Did you know that most surveys show that stuffing is most people’s favorite Thanksgiving dish. Stuffing, not turkey!

People in my family are not big stuffing eaters, and I knew that Nick and I would be pretty much the only people eating the stuffing. So the goal became to cook the stuffing to please Nick, and the way to please Nick with food is to make it the way Nick’s family made it. A brief conversation with Nick’s mom revealed that she uses a stuffing mix. This was not good enough, because I was determined to cook everything from scratch. The search for the perfect recipe continued.

Nick’s mom makes a relatively simple stuffing—bread cubes, seasoning from the mix (probably poultry seasoning), celery and onion sautéed in butter, lots of sage. So I had to eliminate any recipe that called for nuts, dried fruit, berries, sausage, mushrooms, or other similarly “exotic” ingredients. The remaining choices were slim. After eliminating Martha Stewart’s recipe that mysteriously required eggs, I was left with a New York Times stuffing recipe where the only ingredient not mentioned by Nick’s mom was vinegar.

I ran out of turkey broth and did not feel adventurous enough to add more water, so the result was a bit dry. However, the stuffing tasted quite good in the spots where I managed to pour enough broth, so the next attempt should be a lot more palatable.