Jaymes

Reporting from the southern cornbread dressing faction, the answer is yes, always. But with cornbread the consistency is not similar to bread pudding, like it is with regular white bread stuffing. In fact, the "gummy" texture of white bread stuffing is one of the reasons that southerners often give for preferring cornbread. I add two beaten eggs to my big bowl of cornbread and white bread crumbs, chopped celery, onions, etc.

Just to set the record straight, and speaking just for myself, I have no trouble whatsoever "understanding" why some folks prefer to eat their holiday meal in the evening. ________________________

Made the Chicken, Apples & Cream Normande. So, so good. We're trying it next with pork, but this is definitely going into the "company dinner" rotation. Just changed one thing. I believe it called for 2 T of Calvados. But hey, when you've got the bottle in your hand...

Well, in my holiday house, because I basically did it all, there was certainly no sleeping in for me. But rousting the rest of the family (especially teenagers; especially my husband) early was so much trouble that it was easier for me to just do it all. And you're right that another good thing about getting the holiday dinner over early is so that folks that have to drive a couple of hours to get home can do that before it gets too late. _______________________

I used to do bacon and butter. Like runwestierun, I didn't completely separate the skin from the flesh - just kind of crammed stuff up under there. Definitely does make for a moister turkey. If you've ever bought a Butterball turkey, you can see through the skin that something's been shoved up there. I think it used to be real butter in the olden days (hence the name), but am not sure what it is now. But I haven't done it in a while. The family 'young folk' started deep frying the turkey, so I kind of got out of the habit of doing much myself. _________________________

Interesting theory. I'm not sure I get your point. I'm even a little puzzled as to your reason for posting this. You seem inexplicably irritated and annoyed about the time that others choose to have their big holiday meals. But, speaking just for myself, having spent a good deal of time in farm country, I don't recall it being anyone's habit to sleep in, then have a big, lazy breakfast around 9 or 10am, and then go work the back forty for a couple of hours, and then stop working around 2pm or so, when there's still plenty of daylight, and head up to the farmhouse to eat a big sleep-inducing meal around 3pm or so, which basically does you in for the remainder of the workday. The farmers that I've known rise before the sun. Have a fairly hearty pre-dawn breakfast. Head out to milk the cows or feed the chickens or work the fields. Come back to the house to have a big meal around 11-12noon, and then back out to work until sunset, whereupon they have a lighter supper before going to bed early. Not sure how a big meal at 2 or 3 in the afternoon fits into that schedule. But hey, the farms with which you are familiar may do things differently. _________________________

We are always looking for good sweet potato recipes. For one thing, we like kabobs with sweet potatoes and ham and pineapple and green pepper chunks. And the other night, made this: Pork Chops with Apples, Onions and Sweet Potatoes Very tasty. _____________________

We always had creamed baby peas and mushrooms. Never once had green beans prepared any way at all. In fact, our menu never varied: turkey, cornbread dressing, giblet gravy, cranberry sauce, Waldorf salad, creamed baby peas and mushrooms, sweet potato casserole, dinner rolls, relish tray. Christmas dinner is identical, except I add a baked ham and cheesy creamed onions dusted with chopped peanuts. I now have two daughters-in-law and one son-in-law around my holiday table, so have to take their preferences into account. It's changed my menu in two ways. First, we never had mashed potatoes, and I mean never. With cornbread dressing, rolls, sweet potatoes, I thought three starches were more than enough. So now I have to mash potatoes. And they want green beans. But I've never made that casserole and see no reason to start now. I just make green beans the old-fashioned Southern way. In the bottom of a Dutch oven or large saucepan, fry up some chopped bacon. Add a pat or two of butter, whatever herbs you like with green beans (for me it's either basil or oregano), one chopped onion and a little garlic. Saute. Put in your freshly-snapped beans. Cover with chicken broth. Simmer til the green beans are as done as you and your family like them to be, depending upon whether you're feeding Southerners or Yankees. Sometimes for the holiday meal, I do add sliced mushrooms, because I want mushrooms somewhere on the holiday table, and if I'm not doing the creamed peas and mushroom thing, I have to work them in somewhere. __________________________

We are in the "sweet potatoes any way" camp. We certainly do have the traditional sweet potato casserole baked with butter, brown sugar, a bit of orange juice, a splash of bourbon, and a layer of crunchy marshmallows on top. But that's just for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Far too rich and luxurious for any other meal. Usually, it's just plain sweet potatos baked in the oven a long time, until they're nice and caramelly, and served with nothing but butter and salt and pepper. ______________________

It worked great. Because it was so much bigger than the recipe called for, I didn't really pay much attention to the baking time - just cooked it until the whole thing was sagging, and the skin punctured easily. Took the cap off for the last bit, and took it out when the stuffing was well-browned and bubbling merrily and appeared to be cooked through. We had more than enough for our little family, and it was even good reheated the next night. We were unsure as to exactly how to serve it - whether to scoop or slice. We wound up slicing, and that worked really well, too. Served it with a pork tenderloin and a tossed salad. Excellent meal.

Well, I'm pretty clearly no pumpkin expert. I've always been a 'canned pumpkin' girl myself. But that's what the produce manager said it was. I weighed it, so I do know it weighed that much and I got the smallest one. But maybe he was mistaken as to the variety. I wouldn't know enough to know. I doubled the recipe for the stuffing, and it didn't take quite all of it. It took a little more than about one-and-a-half recipe's worth. ___________________________

After some discussion, the produce manager suggested a "sugar baby" pumpkin, so that's what I bought. The smallest sugar baby was nearly six pounds, though, so I don't know if that would have been what Ms. Greenspan would have recommended. It worked out pretty well, but I'd still be curious to know which variety she believes preferable.

I lived in Hong Kong in the late 60's and I definitely wasn't into cooking in those fun, madcap, somewhat wild and misspent days of my youth. In fact, although I'm certain I must have had a kitchen in my bachelorette flat, I don't recall ever being in it, so I have no recipes from that time to share. I was, however, enthusiastically into eating out. I just remember ordering an orange chicken dish often in the restaurants that specialized in Hunan food. It was a favorite. It seems to me that there was a Schezwan version also. When I returned to the US, I ordered it in a Chinese restaurant somewhere and I remember thinking that it was considerably different. So I don't know that I have what I would consider to be an "authentic" recipe and thinking back over some forty years, the memory gets a little fuzzy. I'm not certain how these compare. But these are two recipes I've used with some success: Dried Peel Chicken Orange Peel Chicken My advice to the OP would be that indeed you should post your question in the China forum (I'd even suggest you ask a mod to move this thread). I suspect you'll be far more likely to get direction and guidance there as to some less "goopy" Westernized versions. And of course there's going to be some sort of authentic Chinese dish combining citrus flavors and chicken. After all, the Chinese are famous for the length, breadth, depth, scope of their utterly amazing, inventive and ancient cuisine. They do have oranges and they do have chickens, so it would be absolutely astounding to discover that in all these thousands of years in millions of Chinese kitchens, nobody ever thought about combining the two. ________________________________

I made the Baked Stuffed Pumpkin and we all thought it was terrific and we'll definitely do it again. However, I very much wish there had been some information in the recipe as to what sort of pumpkin to buy. At my store, anyway, there were at least four different varieties. I managed to track down the produce manager and told him what I was buying the pumpkin for, and he selected one. But I was surprised that there was no instructive info in the book.

How about fried basil leaves? You can dust them with flour and then fry, or just toss them unadorned into hot oil: Then sprinkle with a little salt. They're great for garnishes, or just for snacks.

If you don't like the food court "goop," you might try making the original, authentic Hunan orange chicken, which is much less sweet, and uses dried orange or tangerine peels. ______________________

As far as I'm concerned, this is your argument in a nutshell, and I, for one, vehemently disagree. Nobody is going to argue that a lot of salt is good for you. And, to me anyway, whether or not it is good for you is not the issue at all, so your arguments to that effect are completely and totally irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is your statement that you don't "see this as a personal choice issue." And I do. I'll take it one step further: You stay out of my pantry, and don't decide what I do and do not need. And I won't come to your pantry and tell you what I think you do and do not need. If that's a deal, then you better not have any sodas in your pantry. At least salt is an element that humans need. Cokes and 7-up and sodas are nothing but crap. And if you have any, when I get to your pantry, it's all going into the trash. ___________________________

This is the hot turkey sandwich portion of the evening at our place -- and it's for lightweights who didn't take full advantage during round one. Right. Hot turkey sandwiches... And pie for those that took too much "advantage during round one" and had to put dessert off a bit. _________________________

Right, and I know a great many people that schedule Thanksgiving dinner to be eaten during halftime of this or that pointy-ball game. Especially here in Texas.

We're in the 2-3pm crowd. I don't get the bit about folks starving because they've "skipped lunch (and breakfast)." In our family, anyway, everybody but the Thanksgiving dinner cook sleeps in, rising around 9am or so, and has a big holiday breakfast, including sausage, bacon, smoked oysters, eggs, fried tomatoes, breakfast tacos, biscuits & gravy, French toast or pancakes or both, fried potatoes, assorted fruits, and whatever else sounds appealing. We could never serve Thanksgiving dinner before about two or three because everybody's still full from breakfast. So we start our big Thanksgiving dinner around 3 or so, and it takes an hour at least to eat. Then around 5 or 6pm, folks are ready for some pie. Leftover noshing and nibbling begins around 8pm, and continues on and off into late-night-snack- and bedtime. I don't know, but many retired folks that no longer have the forced time constraints of rising early and heading off to a job gradually settle into something similar - big late breakfast, very early dinner - the largest meal of the day - and then a snack or very light supper around bedtime. It's a lot like the Mexican schedule of a "comida," or big meal, early afternoon, and then "cena," or a light supper, eaten later. I have a feeling that's a more natural mealtime rhythm. ______________________________

I know many folks, including me, that do it in the crock pot. In fact, if you google it, you'll find lots of recipes, including this one: Steel-cut oats in the crock pot Even if you prefer not to use a crock pot, you can undoubtedly find some tips, hints, measurements, recipes, that will be useful regardless as to which method you finally settle upon. ____________________

I come from a long line of southern cooks, and the cornbread dressing is always stuffed into the turkey. As soon as the turkey comes out of the oven, just like you do, I put it into a separate casserole dish and give it a few spins in the microwave, just to be sure. Obviously there must be an issue with the dressing not being safe, as I've been reading about that for some thirty years now, but nobody in our family has ever had a problem. I think that some folks used to stuff the turkey the night before, and then leave it all in the fridge until the next day, and then put that well-cooled turkey and dressing into the oven. Then it's difficult to get it all up to cooking temperature quickly. If I've made the dressing the night before, I let it sit on the counter while I prepare the turkey for stuffing. That way, I get the chill off of the dressing before it goes in. The other thing that seems to be critical for safety is not to pack the dressing in tightly. You want it in there fairly loosely, so it's not so dense. It can expand while cooking, and the heat can penetrate more easily. I also pre-heat the oven to 500, so it's nice and hot when the turkey goes in. Then I lower the heat to 325. I also have an oven thermometer that I double-check to be sure of the temperature. One year, long ago, the turkey didn't seem to be cooking fast enough, so I kept turning up the heat. The next week, I had the oven calibrated and, sure enough, it was cooking 75 degrees lower. When you're dealing with something like a stuffed raw turkey, you definitely want to know at exactly what temperature your oven cooks. And there is absolutely nobody in our family, and I mean even the little kids, that can't taste the difference between the dressing that cooked inside the bird, spending hours being basted with turkey fats and juices, and the leftover amount of dressing that doesn't fit inside the bird, and that gets baked separately. The dressing that was baked separately is good, and it always gets eaten sometime during the next few days along with the other leftovers, but the dressing from inside the bird is light years tastier. When you do a side-by-side taste test, there's simply no comparison. A few years back, some of the young folks in our family (okay, the young men) got all excited about deep-frying the bird, because that's the current cool and in thing to do. And my daughter-in-law said she thought that would be good, too, because it would get the men out of the kitchen, and doing something useful. So I thought that maybe I wouldn't have to also roast a stuffed turkey. Yay, easier for me. But no. Turns out that our crew wants both: one that the menfolk can stand around drinking beer and frying in a contraption out on the back patio, AND Mom's traditional old-fashioned turkey, stuffed with the cornbread dressing recipe handed down from her grandma, and her grandma before that, and served with giblet gravy made from the drippings in the roasting pan. As for the celery question, my grandmother's recipe included "about as much celery as you're willing to stand there and chop." _______________________________

I'm with you, Dude. I don't generally like white chocolate, either. It does taste like "straight sugar," suspended in wax. Although I do enjoy the occasional bite of Peppermint Bark during the holidays, I think that otherwise, it's pretty ghastly. In fact, probably wouldn't have even tried the Askinosie white chocolate except that I had occasion to visit the Askinosie chocolate factory, and it was included in the tasting portion. And Mr. Askinosie went into some detail about their white chocolate, clearly with considerable pride. Askinosie White Chocolate So I tried it, and was pleasantly surprised. That's why I'm curious as to where it landed on FG's tasting comparison list. _________________________

I'm curious. The Times of London named the Askinosi White Chocolate "Nibble Bar" one of the Ten Best Bars in the world. Have you tried it? How does it compare? Askinosi White Chocolate Nibble Bar

For me, no question. Askinosie Chocolate Funny, I don't intend to, but every time I indulge in a bit of this, I find I've closed my eyes, the better to savor each melting morsel. Exquisite. And baking chocolate treats with their Single origin cocoa powder gives the most extraordinary flavor to even your most ordinary recipes. I love this place. ______________________________