successful dressing

Thanks to my helpful contributors Newscoma and Genderist (recipes here in the comments) I managed to make the best cornbread dressing of my life. And I've just come back from a lovely Thanksgiving meal at my friend's house. It may have been in London and on a Sunday, but one thing was certainly traditional. I'm feeling uncomfortably full. Like really uncomfortable.

Using Nana's recipe list (that's what I already had) - plus Newscoma's mother's use of many, many eggs - I managed to get a dressing the way I liked it. Unlike the Newscoma recipe, mine was an all cornbread affair - but I may try to half cornbread/ half biscuit thing next time round.

But being me I couldn't follow a recipe straight up. Here were my alterations:

I added herbes de Provence - I know it sounds French (and I guess it is) but it's parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme and bay leaf. I also used leek - a very popular vegetable here in the UK as well as onion.

I still don't know what a fluted mushroom is - so I didn't use any of those. I was a bit doubtful about the sliced almonds, but that worked out really well.



sauteeing veggies: celery, leek, onion and mushrooms - plus those herbes de Provence


et voila - the finished product

I also made some pies (pumpkin and pecan) - and they were really tasty - but weren't quite as pretty. There was an incident - a slight mishap - in the making of the pumpkin pie. Something akin to this holiday disaster and cover up. I'm not really ready to reveal exactly what I did, but you know, no one noticed, and I ate it myself.