Remember Thanksgiving? It Happened.

It was weeks ago already, and I've been totally missing in action ever since. Probably because I just came out of the resulting food coma. I know, I know, it's halfway to New Year's already, but I'm just now getting around to posting a wrap-up of the big day.

Ari, my cousin, made the turkey. He's been doing this for a few years now, and he's really good at it. Look at that turkey thigh! It's moist as can be. And I got a wing, which is always fun, because, you know, it's like a chicken wing, only HUGE.

I made the stuffing I talked about earlier, doctoring up some Whole Foods' brand stuffing mix with Dipaola turkey sausage (IT'S THE BEST) and a ton of fresh celery and onions. It was really good, just what I was hoping for.

I also made a bunch of roasted root veggies: blue potatoes, purple carrots, shallots, and jerusalem artichokes mixed with a ton of fresh rosemary and minced garlic, pimenton, salt and pepper. What could go wrong? Nothing, that's what.

There was also a lentil salad I brought along. It was really good--lentils cooked in vegetable stock, some chopped up carrots and shallots, lemon zest, sherry vinegar, mustard, olive oil, salt and pepper, mixed just til combined. This one's great to take to a party because it keeps really well, and it tastes even better if you make it a few days beforehand.

I also made an incredibly large--3+ gallons--batch of the Potato Leek Soup, a recipe that I've now made more times than I can count. How can just three ingredients come together to be so rich and satisfying? It's particularly good for tiding people over while various sides go in and out of the oven in preparation of the big feast.

So, that was Thanksgiving! Thanks to Aunt Susan and Uncle Jay for hosting everyone (I believe there were about 300 of us in total) and to everyone who brought or made some form of deliciousness, and especially to Mom for decorating the tables and making everything so pretty (that's her handiwork pictured above). I am truly thankful for such a large, loving family that I genuinely look forward to spending time with. And that's to say nothing of how thankful I am for all of you out there reading this. There's more on my list, but those two will have to do for now. Hope you all had a great holiday, and good luck with all the Christmas, Hannukah, New Years', and whatever else parties you all have coming up!

Round Two: Bread Stuffing, Tweaked

Okay, that didn't go so well. It's okay. That's why I made a stuffing ahead of time. Determined to make a phenomenal Thanksgiving stuffing, I dusted myself off and got back on the horse on Saturday, making a second stuffing. This one was for the purpose of getting the texture right--moist, but not mushy (the first one was like a plate of breadcrumbs, with turkey sausage).

Above is the stuffing before it went into the oven. I sauteed onions in equal parts oil and butter until soft, then added some herbs, the bread cubes (from Bread Alone, a hearty mix of whites and whole wheats) and a fair amount of stock and water until I had what I thought was the right consistency.

So this stuffing was markedly better. It was moist, though still not nearly as wet as I like it, and cooking it in my amazing new Staub dutch oven gave it an incredible crust on the bottom. But I still wasn't sure about this stuffing. Even with more moisture, it didn't taste like what I was used to, and to me, that's the most important thing with Thanksgiving stuffing. Below, the stuffing after it came out of the oven (the cast iron gave it an incredible crust).

What exactly am I used to? Pepperidge Farm's bag of stuffing, that's what. Resting somewhere on the legitimacy scale between Stove Top and from-scratch stuffing, it's real bread and a seasoning pack. And after reading this post on Serious Eats rounding up store bought stuffings, I feel reassured that I should stick with what I already know I like. I'm confident that the stuffing will still to be totally next level, because I'm taking the advice of the Serious Eats team and doctoring it up with the things I planned to put in my homemade stuffing (chief among them Dipaola Turkey Sausage from the Greenmarket, aka the best turkey sausage EVER). I'll let you know how it goes after the big day.

Do Not Panic, This is Only a Test: Bittman's Favorite Bread Stuffing

I've never made stuffing from scratch before, so when I said I'd do it for Thanksgiving dinner this year, I decided to get some practice in.

"This classic dressing is based on a wonderful recipe by James Beard," Bittman writes in the introduction to what is billed in the book simply as My Favorite Bread Stuffing. Fair enough. I'm not one to start second guessing Bittman, let alone James Beard himself. I went with the sausage variation, using turkey sausage.

Bittman's stuffing recipe is strange, though. First of all, the recipe calls for breadcrumbs instead of cubed bread. That was unexpected, but again, who am I to second guess James Beard? Nobody, that's who. I'd never had breadcrumb-based stuffing. Maybe it would be really good. This is just practice stuffing. Stick with the recipe.

So, you cook the sausage in its own fat (I added a bit of oil, as turkey sausage has a lot less fat to render than pork sausage) then add onion, minced garlic and ginger, and a teaspoon of cumin if you like (I skipped the cumin). Then you stir in the breadcrumbs and some chopped scallions. Then you bake it, either in the bird or in a baking dish. I opted for a baking dish, because that's how my family rolls, and I don't know if I'll be at Thanksgiving in time to get my stuffing in the actual bird. Now, every other stuffing recipe I've ever seen has you add stock or water to the breadcrumbs/cubes at this point. This one makes no mention of that.

I had a bad feeling about this one from the get-go. It was disappointing, but to be fair, it was stuffing with sausage in it--we had no trouble finishing it. Also, it turns out that shrimp and stuffing go well together, so there's that. I didn't get any pictures of the stuffing, but here's one of the shrimp we ate it with.

What's your favorite stuffing recipe? Let me know in the comments, I think I have time for one more dry run before Thanksgiving hits.