Stuffing or Dressing? How about Stuffed Dressing

The same questions arise every Thanksgiving. . .yams or sweet potatoes and stuffing or dressing. The answers are easy if you want to get technical, but let's not. When families come together for a bountiful meal, whether they call it stuffing and yams, or dressing and sweet potatoes, may they be blessed and enjoy. For the record, I am in the latter group.

I was surveying my kitchen inventory recently, after we'd had a weekend visit from out-of-town family, planning uses for all the leftovers. I saw leftover cornbread, extra sandwich bread, and a few biscuits left from breakfast. As I thought of the sliced turkey, bought for sandwiches, left in the fridge, I had an aha! moment. I would make simple turkey and dressing.

Not knowing exactly how this was going to come together, I starting crumbling the cornbread, biscuits, and a few slices of sandwich bread into a large bowl. I sliced a few stalks of celery and chopped a large, sweet onion, then sauteed them in about 6 tablespoons of butter. I was visualizing as I was crumbling and chopping and it came to me what I would do.

I added the sauteed vegetables to the crumbled bread mixture, added a couple of beaten eggs, a can of chicken broth, a couple of teaspoons of poultry seasoning, along with some salt and pepper, plus some chopped parsley. I wished it were moister, so I added some milk until it was the very moist consistency I was looking for.

I put half the mixture in the bottom of a baking pan and topped it with sliced turkey. Over the turkey, I added a layer of cranberry sauce. Then I added the remainder of the dressing mixture and baked it in in a 375 degree oven for about 50 minutes, until it was firm and nicely browned.

I served it with extra cranberry sauce but gravy (or both) would also be good. It was while I was eating it that I came up with the name for it--Stuffed Dressing. Pritchard Parker said, Mmmm!!