I love to cook. The wife isn't into cooking so much. I mean she can cook OK, but I'm the foodie. I love to experiment, and I love the Food Channel and learning new techniques and how to pair flavors. Turkey is easy, it's the stuffing that makes the bird. I've been working on a stuffing recipe for a while now, and I think this year it will be the bomb. Last year it was great, but this year I'm going for broke. I started with two loaves of Sourdough bread. Cubed it up and seasoned it with garlic, onion, parsley and oregano. Put it in the oven for 2-3 hours to dry out and get nice and crunchy. While that was toasting, I cooked up a package of mild breakfast sausage. Browned it up nice and drained it well. Then I used about 3/4 package of Bacon, and cooked that up nice and crisp, then diced it up fine. Then I chopped up some celery, onion and garlic and sweated it well in the bacon grease until it was soft, but not caramelized. I drained it well and put it on paper towels to absorb the extra bacon grease. Tomorrow I will mix it all together with some chicken stock and stuff the bird. The rest will go into a pan for extra stuffing to send home with our guests. Last year I did this, but without the bacon and IT WAS KILLER. I think the bacon will put it over the top. It will be my best effort yet I think. We are also having mashed potatoes, with my own twist of caramelized onion and garlic and.....bacon of course. I'm also making roasted carrots and parsnips and home made Cranberry sauce. I love Thanksgiving. Good food, family, lots of beer and wine. Share some of your Thanksgiving recipes and stories!
