This Thanksgiving we will
have dinner at friends’ house. That will be lovely, but Dennis was regretful
that we wouldn’t have leftovers, his favorite part of the Thanksgiving
tradition. I would miss them, too, especially my favorite parts – dressing and
gravy and cranberry sauce. That prompted me to start saving the remnants of our
whole wheat bread, leftover biscuits, and cornbread, which are the basis of
dressing.
Finally I couldn’t resist
any longer. I roasted a turkey breast (two people could never eat a whole
turkey) and made dressing, gravy, mashed potatoes, and baked squash for last
night’s supper.
I make dressing almost
exactly the way my mother did. First, she slowly sautéed a considerable amount
of chopped onions and celery in butter. These she poured over the broken up
breads she had saved, Next she added lots of dried sage and mixed all these
together. Finally, she poured in a sufficient amount of turkey broth to moisten
the bread cubes, and lightly packed the mixture into a large, shallow baking
dish. She never put the dressing inside the bird, but baked it separately.
I’ve changed her "recipe" only to add minced fresh parsley. Yesterday I had no giblets to provide broth,
but I found a container of pheasant broth my brother left in our freezer last
summer. For the gravy I used chicken broth I’d saved from stewing chicken for
salad.
Oh, my, what a tasty supper
we had! But, darn it, I forgot to make cranberry sauce.
Copyright
2013 by Shirley Domer
No comments:
Post a Comment