Monday, December 2, 2013

The Big Yellow Bowl

When I was growing up, my mother always made cornbread dressing (or stuffing, if you call it that) for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I am telling you right now, this stuff is one of my favorite things in the entire world.  I had some time to reminisce over the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend about all the preparations for making it, and especially about the big yellow Pyrex bowl she always mixed it in.

The key to Peg's Cornbread Dressing is starting it early in the day and letting the flavors blend.  You bake a pan of cornbread (a box of Jiffy is all of 60 cents, I think) (1 egg plus 1/3 milk, 400 degree for 20 minutes!) and cut it into little squares.  Then you add the white bread (my mother would add Roman Meal or "Hollywood" bread, with the sesame seeds, which I don't think they even make any more), the celery, the onion (cry a little), the spices, and especially the sage.  Lots and lots of sage.  And then melted butter.  And you let it sit on the counter for at least a couple of hours.

My mother (Peg) has those nesting Pyrex bowls from the 1950s - the big one is yellow, the next smallest is green, the next smallest one is red, and the smallest one is blue (she made egg salad in the blue one, Waldorf salad [blech] in the red one, and mixed cookies and cakes in the green one).  The big yellow bowl was designated for the dressing.



So - here we are - all the dressing ingredients are in The Big Yellow Bowl, and all the spices are chatting, getting acquainted, merging.  It is AMAZING.  Part of the recipe includes the notation "Sniff the big yellow bowl every now and then and adjust the sage as necessary."  I have actually done that at my parents' house - we would sniff, and I'd say, "Yep - needs more sage."  And Mom would add more.

About an hour before the turkey is going to be done (my mom's turkey was always dry because she cooked it FOREVER, which apparently was the trend before someone who didn't like gravy complained about the turkey always being dry), you douse the dressing with a bunch of chicken stock to make it stick together.  Naturally, you are still sniffing all the while, tasting, adding salt, adding pepper, sometimes adding sage if your daughter hasn't urged you to do so earlier in the day.  Then you put it in a buttered casserole dish and bake it.  It comes out nice and browned on the top, and nice and moist inside.

I have nesting bowls, too.  I will inherit my mother's eventually (which will be awesome!) but for now, I have plastic ones that my husband bought at Costco.  What is magical is this:  THE BIG ONE IS YELLOW!!!  It's a holiday miracle!

So - yes, you guessed it - part of the holiday tradition at our house now is making Peg's Cornbread Dressing in The Big Yellow Bowl.  The cornbread, the white bread, the celery, the massive Spanish onion, and the sage, oh, the sage! all go in the bowl.  I use Earth Balance instead of butter, but that's the one and only difference.  And - of course - it sits on the counter and I walk by and sniff it every so often.  This year, it sat there for four hours, at least.  The smell of it was heavenly, and I did add just a smidge more sage over and above the 2 tablespoons I had already put in.  I baked it in a big round Pyrex casserole (which I think used to be my mother's, since it comes with a serving basket typical of the 1970s) and it came out perfectly.

My husband asked why I don't add sausage, or apples, or dark bread....all of which sound great, but then it wouldn't be Peg's Cornbread Dressing - it will be some iteration of Alma's (my mother-in-law's) dressing.  Maybe next year I will double the recipe and put some sausage and apples in half of it.

But that will have to go into another color bowl.  I'll be mixing up The Original Recipe in The Big Yellow Bowl.

P.S.  I have just one question:  Why do I only make this for Thanksgiving and Christmas?!