Thanksgiving Dressing

Today was the first Thanksgiving without my mother.  When Mom passed away, I discovered that my nieces and nephew did not know my perspective of family stories.  I suppose I should not be surprised as my sister and I are different people with different memories.  Many of my memories are associated with food, and Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays because of it.  

My mother's dressing recipe was given to her by her mother, who we called Granny.  Granny got it from her mother (Grandma Dora) and so forth.  I love making this dressing because it is not only delicious, but I feel like I'm channeling generations of women before me when I make it. 

Now all of the women in our family are good cooks and they are pretty particular to their way of doing things.  Most of our recipes are not written down and I drove my grandmother crazy to try to capture a few of her recipes to write in my little green cookbook.  It was Thanksgiving 1980 when my grandmother discovered that my mother had not been faithful to her dressing recipe.  

Mom's recipe had the basics: Cornbread, biscuits, toast, celery, onion, sage, pepper, salt, and essence.  However, she changed the ratios.  Granny was sincerely not happy.  My mother pointed out that Granny had changed Grandma Dora's recipe and everyone froze in place as if Grandma Dora would materialize right before us to extract retribution.  My eyes were wide!

Grandma Dora made everything by hand.  The breads, biscuits, cornbread.  She even grew her own sage, celery, and onions.  Grandma Dora was married to a butcher who provided the holiday turkey.  Now, sometime in the mid-1950s, my grandmother switched to tin biscuits.  (She insisted on using only the Pillsbury brand.)  In addition, she used Bunny Bread and purchased her other ingredients at Kroger.  

My mother followed in Granny's footsteps with purchasing the basics at the supermarket.  However, where Granny used 10 tin biscuits, my mother used 15.  Granny used two full pans of cornbread (made from scratch without sugar) and Mom reduced the amount to one and one-half pans.  Mom also used Wonder bread.

After realizing that Grandma Dora had better things to do, my grandmother continued to break up her day-old breads while my mother heavily chopped celery and onions for the dressing.  I silently scribed both recipes so I would not offend either.  As I wrote, each carefully explained the process of dressing-making while emphasizing justification to her own personal version.  

When it is time to remove the essence from the turkey, which is the liquid that gathers as the turkey cooks, the dressing is mixed.  This is my favorite moment.  Once it is well-blended, we hovered around the bowl taking small scoops of raw dressing and chewing slowly.

Granny would question, "Salt?"  Mom and I would chew and nod if it had enough salt.  Granny would taste it and nod her agreement.  Next, Granny would ask, "Sage?"  Mom and I would take another bite and chew slowly pondering the sagely mix.  "Add a bit more," Mom would say.  Granny would taste and nod in agreement, "I think more of the rubbed than the ground sage is needed."  Sage would be added and we would all taste again.

This would continue until the mix was agreeable to all of us.  As Granny went to wash her hands, Mom whispered, "It needs more biscuits!"  Granny shouted, "I heard that and it is perfect!"  Both Granny and Mom possessed excellent hearing.  Sadly, a trait I lack.

We would place the dressing in rounded balls on a cookie sheet and bake it before placing around the turkey for the dinner table.  Simply delicious.

So today, I made my dressing and channeled Mom, Granny, and even Grandma Dora.  I used tin biscuits and white bread, but I could not find Wonder or Bunny breads, so I used White Wheat bread.   Unlike either, I used two small pans of cornbread and twenty Pillsbury biscuits.  I also use an egg and bake it in a casserole dish.  While making adjustments to the seasonings, I wished with all of my heart that the three of them would manifest to complain of my changes.  Unfortunately, they all had better things to do.