American Elephants

Having gone this far, I’ll offer my stuffing recipe as well. If you love cornbread stuffing, want all sorts of foreign materials in your stuffing, this is not for you.

Stuffing is easy to make, but a few simple tricks help. You want a homestyle or farm style white bread,  the closer to home-made the better — heavier and coarser than standard sandwich bread, Day-old is fine. Buy two loaves several days early. At least the day before you are going to make stuffing, spread the bread out on a cookie sheet to air dry. The night before, tear the bread into pieces roughly the size of large croutons, and leave out to dry more. I usually make up about a loaf and a half. The recipe is vague and to taste. You can’t really go wrong.

1½ loaves homestyle bread torn into small pieces
1½– 2 cups celery in roughly ¼ inch dice
1 large onion diced, or 2 smaller ones
Toss well till mixed.

Sprinkle lightly with salt and ground pepper
Sprinkle lightly with sage, probably a slightly
heaping teaspoonful. I prefer the kind that are
crumbled leaves rather than ground to a powder.
Optional: add some celery seed.

Melt 1 cube of butter (do not brown). Pour slowly over
the bread mixture while tossing, until it is slightly
moist. You don’t have to use it all. ½–¾ cup may
be plenty. Taste it frequently till it seems right.

That’s it. Add nothing else. No broth. The dry stuffing goes directly in
both cavities of the bird, firmly packed.  If you are passionate about
oysters in your dressing, you can add cut up oysters, but don’t, as
they say, put earrings on an elephant.

If you have too much stuffing mix, put it in a casserole, pour a little turkey broth (neck, giblets, chopped and simmered with celery and onion) and bake along with the bird if you have room, or refrigerate and bake later.