Monday, November 6, 2017

Stove Top Stuffing Made From Scratch




Recipe and Photo
by Linda Altoonian

Though a moist turkey was always the star on our holiday table, the costar was always my mom’s home-made, stove top stuffing. Most of it never made it to the table because every time folks passed the pan, they stole ‘just one more bite.”’ This is so good that you will find yourself making it year round.

Ingredients
1 stick butter, melted
1 large onion, diced
Turkey giblets, skinned, deveined and chopped fine
1 container of celery flakes
1 tsp. thyme leaves
1 Tbs. rubbed sage
8 slides of whole wheat bread, moistened with water or chicken broth, and chopped up

Directions
1. Sauté onion until golden.
2. Add giblets to onion and sauté until cooked.
3. Add all three spices and stir.
4. Add moistened bread and stir until coated with spices.
5. Cover and cook until bread is thoroughly heated and browned.

Thanksgiving, Triumphing Over Turkeys

by Lael Morgan



Celebrating Thanksgiving was my first real battle as a bride. It was the long-established tradition of my husband’s family that his mother and stepfather host a Pilgrim-appropriate, traditional dinner in the lovely dining room of their gracious Tudor-styled home in West Newton, Massachusetts. They had managed their mob scene of kith and kin for years.  They were famous for and proud of the feasts they’d provided. Family attendance was mandatory, but I refused to attend.
For starters, both my husband and I were in our last year as students at Boston University while holding down weighty part-time jobs, so we didn’t have much time alone together.  I knew if I gave in to my charming but strong-willed mother-in-law at that point, I’d be doing it for the rest of my life. Also, I longed to start a Thanksgiving tradition of my own that didn’t include turkey. 
So we newly-weds stayed home and enjoyed lobster followed by ice cream. Not only was it our favorite meal and dirt cheap in those days, but it required no advanced preparation except for covering our dining table with old newspapers and setting it with forks, nut picks and pliers while waiting 13 minutes for the lobster to steam as we melted butter.  That day was so lovely I felt guilty about it until my sister-in-law told me how much she envied our break-away and considered following suit.
Not that I disliked the usual Thanksgiving fare.  My forebears, like those of my in-laws, had come over on the Mayflower, and I loved all their menu basics.  In fact, I longed for something traditional when, a few years later, my husband and I sailed around the world on a 36-foot, 50-year-old schooner and Thanksgiving found us somewhere in the Inland Passage of the east coast.
Tying up to another boat of like-minded sailors, we hosted a spread which included mashed squash, cranberry sauce and a small turkey laboriously roasted in a fold-up oven planted over a primus stove. The meal, lubricated with local moonshine, was a great success, but, alas, I retired before cleanup and was awakened at 2 a.m. when our boat dragged its anchor towards the rocky shore, with that of our still tied-up guest, in a violent storm.
            Mustering on deck in heavy rain, wearing only my nightgown, I managed to untie the boat of our friends while my husband kept us all off the rocks and maneuvered to a safe place in the harbor.  But I did consider suicide when I discovered the stormy seas had bounced mashed squash and cranberry sauce on our galley ceiling and lodged turkey, raised rolls, butter and Indian pudding with whipped cream in our bunks.
Later, on my own, when teaching at University of Alaska Fairbanks, I dragged out all my traditional Thanksgiving recipes for the parent-deprived students and single faculty who became my guests. This went well until our holiday celebrations became super popular and one Thanksgiving morning at 5 a.m. I found myself preparing a turkey that weighed almost as much as I did.
Still groggy from sleep deprivation, I finally got the bird I could barely lift into the oven, only to push the “Clean” button for which there is no “Off” switch.  That meal was saved by a strong neighbor who managed to push the stove forward so we could unplug it.
         I also enjoyed traditional Thanksgiving fare when two friends and I illegally traveled the private Dalton Highway from Fairbanks to the North Slope where all the oil is, over a Thanksgiving break.  Knowing there was only one stop where food was sold along that two-day haul, we precooked a traditional meal and enjoyed it cold at a spot on the map labeled “Gobblers Knob” for no reason we ever heard of.
Years later, I returned to New England to run a newspaper for my now ex-husband and began attending his family Thanksgiving celebrations where I was overjoyed to discover the menu was based on my stubborn legacy of lobster. Having replaced his mother as the keeper of family traditions, he had long since made lobster the standard. Traditional kith and kin brought cooked turkeys, pumpkin pies and the usual holiday fare to enjoy the next day, but he provided a marvelous lobster bake banked with seaweed on the shore of Snow Island in Maine that would convince even the most severe doubter that this was a good idea.
Today, back in Alaska where Maine lobsters cost a zillion dollars to import, I sometimes substitute Alaska king crab which are darned near as tasty and takes the same scant time to produce.  Or, if I have some extra time, I may go with turkey this year because I love the wings and stuffing and Indian pudding. However, I do have reservations about how our Pilgrim Fathers treated the Indians who saved their lives on that first thanksgiving when the new settlers didn’t have their sox up (i.e. a winter food supply).  In fact, it is my theory that most of those who landed on or about Plymouth Rock couldn’t have survived without the kindness of Indian strangers.
Yet this holiday is about giving thanks today. It’s not a time capsule in which to deify our founding fathers or the Native Americans who saved them. Which is why I feel free to celebrate it with a menu of my choice, felling no guilt if I have kitchen time constraints.