My main job for the family Thanksgiving dinner is to prepare the cornbread dressing, what some may call stuffing. It's just too bad no one seems to make it like I do, so I'm stuck with it, but I love to do it. Chopping onions, celery and hard boiled eggs the night before in preparation, saving chicken broth from previous roastings, baking a couple of cast iron pans full of cornbread, toasting some stale bread into croutons, cracking and mixing in more eggs...it's a little extra work, but it all comes together so well with a little sage thrown in.
We have a lab-border collie rescue dog, Maya, who adores cornbread. No, she obsesses over cornbread. When it's baking, she's positioned by the oven, just soaking in the scent. We speculate that's all she got to eat as a puppy before we found her, and it makes her all nostalgic for the good old days under the house in Georgia where she was born.
Two years ago, I was all up in the dressing-making. All ingredients combined, poured into two large baking pans ready to go into the oven, setting on top of the stove. I began to worry the dressing was too dry. No more homemade broth, I'd used it all. No canned broth in the pantry. Decided to make a run to the grocery store and grab a can of broth.
When I came back, my husband met me in the kitchen and asked why I made two pans only one-third filled with dressing. I stared at the pans -all the "raw" dressing was gone except for thin line at the back of each pan. Maya, who's an Olympic-worthy counter-surfer, had taken advantage of my absence and devoured almost two whole pans of cornbread, eggs, and uncooked onions and celery. She was on the floor sleeping it off.
Now here's the bad part. I combined the two pans, quickly added more celery, onions, bread and eggs, along with the storebrought broth. Only one pan of dressing, but it was all eaten and everyone raved about it. Maybe it was the dog germs, cooked down, that made it so wonderful. Sorry if this grosses anyone out, but heat kills all ick, in my scientific estimation.
Another day, I may tell you about the paprika with the weevil infestation that made the most awesome devilled eggs.