No cranberries. No pecans. And forget the canned pumpkin. Celebrating America’s most foodie of holidays while abroad certainly poses its challenges. But by jove, we were going to try our darndest. The email was sent out to the class: “The 4th Thursday of November is a national holiday in the USA, a day originally to remember and celebrate the hospitality that the Native Americans showed the pilgrims during their first winter. Without the Native Americans sharing their knowledge of native crops, of squash, corn etc, the pilgrims may not have survived. (Whether the Native Americans may have later regreted this generousity is another story.)” A list of suggested dishes was provided, with the invitation to choose one and bring it to the Thanksgiving potluck. Without giving it too much thought, I volunteered to make the stuffing. After all, the StoveTop version takes six minutes to make; how difficult can this possibly be?

I should mention that my family has never done a Thanksgiving dinner with the classic roast turkey; we think it’s too dry/flavorless to merit 20 hours of roasting time. In the past, we have made curry turkey or deep-fried turkey, or deviated entirely away from turkey to lobster, soft-shelled crab, duck, hotpot…you get the idea. I did suggest hotpot for Thanksgiving dinner to my classmates, but this was met with strong cries of resistance. Ah well.

As it turns out, for many people, stuffing is the pinnacle of the Thanksgiving feast. (And here I thought it was all about the turkey.) Immediately after I announced my intent to make the stuffing, people began barraging me with questions on what kind of stuffing I was making, which recipe I was using, whether I was using drippings from a turkey that I’d freshly slaughtered in my backyard, etc. Okay, I am kidding about that last point, but the onslaught of concerned inquiries made one thing quite clear: stuffing is Serious Business. I assured everyone that yes I have made stuffing before (um, sometimes I toss rice with pan drippings?) and I would be using my grandmother’s traditional recipe (actually, my grandmother has never eaten stuffing in her life). Then, I started scouring the internet for stuffing help.
Continue reading Badass Sage and Sausage Stuffing, or a UNISG Thanksgiving →