My mother wrote this down for me many years ago. It's fun to see her handwriting.
My cornbread is in the oven. Two 8x8 pans, ready to be mixed into dressing for Thanksgiving Day. I came here to look up the dressing recipe that my mother gave me many years ago. Decided I would share it again in case you are looking for a recipe. I made this last year and it was as good as I remember. It's the simplest recipe out there.
As far back as I can remember, we had dressing. Not stuffing. Dressing is baked in a dish separate from the turkey. Stuffing is just what it implies—it's stuffed inside the turkey and it cooks while the turkey is roasting. I've never had stuffing. Ever.
Both son-in-laws have made dressing from their family recipes. And both are good. All three are similar in taste. My family's version is the least complicated. I know my mother used sage, so I added that even though she didn't include it in her written recipe. This recipe dates back to a time when full instructions were not always included. Cooks just "knew' what to do.
So if you are the one responsible for the dressing this year, here is my mother's recipe. Read the notes below the recipe.
CORNBREAD DRESSING
1 9x9-inch pan of cornbread (I used the recipe on the White Lily self-rising cornmeal mix bag)
1 egg
*1/3 cup celery, chopped fine
*1 medium onion, chopped fine
*a little Pepperidge Farm seasoned herb stuffing mix
enough chicken or turkey broth to moisten (and make it "mushy")
I added a few shakes of ground sage
Crumble the cornbread with your fingers so that there are no large pieces. The texture is a fine crumb. Mix all ingredients together, adding enough broth to make the mixture "mushy." Put into a greased 9x9 pan and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until lightly browned on top.
Notes:
*Double everything for a 9x13 pan. And the cooking time was nearly double, too. My double batch filled a 9x13 dish, plus a 1-qt dish which went into the freezer.
*Mother always stressed the importance of chopping the celery and onion fine. She said no one wants to bite into a big piece of celery.
*I had a thought during the night! I did a reverse weigh of the stuffing I had left to figure out how much I used! It was right at 1 cup for a 9x9 pan of cornbread.
*It can be mixed the day before and refrigerated until it's time to bake. Adjust your time if baking straight from the refrigerator.
And that's all she told me! Sometimes she added a little mashed cooked sweet potato to keep the dressing moist. (Instead of the can of chicken soup folks use now.) Last week I used the herb stuffing mix. How much you ask? About that much! I know you hate answers like that, but I can't tell you any more.
And how much broth? For my double batch it was a little over a quart. I was using boxes of Swansons and I had to open the 2nd box. It always takes more than I think.
A better question would be "how do I know when I've added enough?" My mother only said "mushy." I would add "but not soupy." Mine sloshed around a little in the dish when I put it in the refrigerator.
If you are brave enough to make this recipe that doesn't have precise amounts, remember that my mother never measured anything. So it's unlikely the amounts she used would have been exactly the same each time. And it always worked. I don't think precise is a requirement here.
Tomorrow, the day before Thanksgiving, I will mix up the dressing and have it ready to go into the oven on Thursday morning. I'm pretty sure there will be enough to fill a 9x13-inch dish for the Thanksgiving table and a smaller dish to go into the freezer. I'll freeze it before I bake it.
I got a text yesterday wishing me happy birthday that continued, "I hope you aren't cooking your own birthday dinner!" Well, it turns out that I did cook supper last night. We can have a "birthday dinner" some other time. Yesterday afternoon was busy so I planned a slow cooker meal and tried a new recipe. This one is good enough to share. The recipe is at the bottom.
What I did give myself as a birthday treat was extra time at the piano. I started piano lessons at age 6. And for well over 50 years everything I played was some kind of music written down in a book or on a piece of sheet music. I have stacks and stacks of music and shelves full of books.
A curiousity you would see on my music shelves was the collection of fake books that I could not play from. If you are not a musician, that just means you only get a melody line and the chord names written in the appropriate place. (These are called lead sheets.) Not a complete written out song. Most fake books have hundreds of songs. I clearly remember buying my first fake book in 1974. The cover has fallen off but I still have it. Over the years I kept adding another fake book to my collection even though I didn't know what to do with them. It's a mystery why I even bought the first one, much less several more.
But it must have been a deeply buried desire to one day be able to sit down and play freely. No need to focus my eyes on tiny little black dots printed on the page. As I have aged, that is becoming hard to do. Buying those books was like planting seeds. Seeds that finally started to grow about two years ago when I started learning new music skills*. Learning chords—even the crazy sounding jazz chords with long symbols. (Easier to play than to read.) And most importantly learning that a lead sheet is a suggestion of a song. I can play it anyway I want to. Change the rhythm, change the chords, even tinker with the melody.
This has become my brain work. I have friends who love jigsaw puzzles, crossword puzzles, Sudoku, cryptograms...all ways to keep our brains working. What I am doing is the same thing in musical form.
I only play for myself, in my own home. There is no goal to play "out" somewhere. It's just for fun. But oh, what fun I'm having! Here is a song I recorded yesterday. I remember hearing it when I was growing up. Some of you might remember this tune, too.
I gave myself quite a gift. The gift of not thinking I was too old to learn something completely new. Yes, this way of playing is THAT much different from reading music. So maybe it's time for you to try something you've always wanted to do. Instead of saying "I'm too old" say "better late than never!"
Now on to what was cooking in the slow cooker while I spent most of the morning at the piano. Beef Stroganoff is a perfect slow cooker recipe. The meat was so tender when it was done. It's close to how I usually cook stew meat (cubes of beef you can buy already cut up at the grocery store.). This recipe has more seasoning which upped the flavor. And the sour cream added richness.
Because we are a household of two, before I added the sour cream, I put half the cooked meat into a freezer container to save for later. You really cannot freeze it successfully after the sour cream is added. The sour cream will separate or curdle when it's thawed and reheated. When we are ready to have it another night, I will thaw, heat and then add the sour cream. Or, it would also be fine with NO sour cream. You just can't say you're having "stroganoff" for dinner that night. It's the sour cream gravy that makes it stroganoff.
SLOW COOKER BEEF STROGANOFF
1 (10-1/2 oz.) can condensed cream of mushroom soup
3 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 envelope dry onion soup mix
8-oz. sliced mushrooms (I used baby Bellas)
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2-1/2 lbs. beef stew meat, cubed (I buy this already cut into cubes)
1 cup sour cream
16-oz. egg noodles
In your slow cooker, mix cream of mushroom soup, garlic, Worcestershire sauce and dry onion soup mix until blended. Add diced onions and mushrooms and stir. Add stew meat and mix until coated in the soup mixture.
Cook on LOW for 6-8 hours. (I cooked mine for 9 hours because of my schedule.)
When it's done, skim off any excess fat, then mix in sour cream.
Serve over cooked egg noodles.
You can't get much easier than this. I will say that when I first took the lid off the slow cooker and added the sour cream, I thought the gravy was too thin. But I let it sit that way while I cooked the noodles. From the time I started heating the water to boil the noodles until they were done and drained was about 20 minutes. And by then, the gravy looked much more like "gravy."
If you read the blog you saw that I saved half the recipe for the freezer BEFORE I added the sour cream. And we still have enough left for supper tonight. I don't mind leftovers for one night. More than that is too much!
This recipe came from Easy Family Recipes. You can find her excellent website online or follow her on Instagram, like I do. The recipes are just like she says—easy.
*I joined this online piano lesson site 3-1/2 years ago. It has been more than I hoped for.
