Thanksgiving: Blue Collar Stuffing and Various Fruit Crisp (plus a flashback)

Mr. T&A and I hosted Thanksgiving for Mother-in-Law T&A and another friend last week, and I am very relieved to report it all went swimmingly. I wasn't worried because of the MiL's presence--she is a very lovely, non-stress-inducing person--but rather because the only other time I was involved in making Thanksgiving it went . . . not well.

~Flashback~

It was on my study-abroad program (Budapest Semesters in Mathematics '98 in da house!) The first problem was that we couldn't figure out the Hungarian word for turkey, nor could we identify one by sight, so we were entirely unsure what kind of fowl we had purchased, and thus of how to cook it. (Well, really the first sign was the presence of my college boyfriend, but this is not that kind of blog.) The second, and more alarming, problem was the power outage, which came halfway through the food preparation. I had previously idly wondered what would happen if the power went out in Budapest, because all the apartment buildings had main doors that required you to push a button on the adjacent wall in order to get out. As was confirmed when we left to buy candles, the buttons, in fact, did not work absent electricity. After quite a lot of freaking out, we figured out that there was actually a keyhole on the inside of the door.

Of course, after all that freaking out, Problem # 3--excessive drinking of vodka--was inevitable, and led predicably to Problems # 4 and 5, severe undercooking of mystery fowl and severe hangovers combined with possible food poisoning. Ahhh, college.

~End flashback~

Anyway, for this Thanksgiving we cooked cornish hens, stuffing, corn bread, mac & cheese, sweet potatoes, mixed-fruit crisp, and cinnamon ice cream. I will only write about the stuffing and the crisp because those are the things I was in charge of.

Blue Collar Stuffing

I was stressed about the stuffing because I had completely spurned Mr. T&A's proposals for stuffing recipes containing things like sausage and fennel, in favor of a word-of-mouth recipe from my mom consisting only of bread, poultry seasoning, and water. And onion. And maybe an egg. I have internalized my mom's dedication to Blue Collar Stuffing, which she learned from my Gram, and which became a Thanksgiving necessity when John Mohan (father of the illustrious Jake Mohan of Jakemohan.net) told my mom her stuffing was great because it didn't have bullshit like vegetables in it.

Anyway, the stuffing went great--would Gram and John Mohan allow anything else? The key is to buy a loaf of the blue collar-iest bread possible--white, soft bread, the kind you would feed to ducks--pull or cut it into small-but-not-crumb-size pieces, and dry it out considerably, like overnight or in the oven on low. You then mix it with a sauteed onion (we also used celery, but I would leave it out next time--bullshit vegetables), add water or broth until it sticks together some, add an egg if you want, and mix in a generous amount of poultry seasoning--more than it says on the poultry seasoning container, but less than the whole container. You want it to turn fairly green. Then bake it at 350 for, you know, awhile, maybe 45 minutes, covered with foil for part of the time.

Mmm, stuffing.

Crisp o' Various Fruits

I decided on crisp because I like fruity desserts, but don't like pie enough to bother figuring out the deal with the crust. I picked this recipe because it had good reviews and allowed flexibility in fruit selection, which is key in late November. Whole Foods didn't have peaches, so I bought blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, and a mango. The recipe is very easy--you cut up the fruit, mix it together, add a bit of sugar and flour, bake that for awhile, and then separately make a topping, add that and bake for another 20 minutes.

The topping was fairly confusing, though. There are 50+ reviews on Epicurious, and many of them say to double the topping amount and to add oats. I was all over that because I like topping, and it seems like a crisp topping should have oats in it--otherwise what is the butter and sugar supposed to cling to? But the problem with following suggestions like "double the topping and add some oats" is, what's the stopping point? So, I ended up with too much topping. Next time I'd 1.5x the topping, and show restraint on the oats--limit it to one modest handful. Otherwise, it was awesome--the fruit stood out very well, and the topping was crispy, buttery, and sweet, just as the gods of dessert intended.