Postcards, Postkarte, and a classic stuffing

I have already put on the holiday pounds, having spent the past week and a half preparing packages of homemade goodies to hand off to about two dozen good people and their families. Today, though, I'm taking a bit of a break.

I've already prepared all the basic ingredients ahead of time -- to take with me to my extended family's house tomorrow before dawn -- for our family's traditional cornbread stuffing.

Basic cornbread stuffing:

Ingredients:
one large batch of your favorite cornbread recipe (Here's where I cheat: I prefer 2 boxes of Jiffy brand cornbread muffin mix), made several days in advance, then cut into cubes or large crumbs and allowed to become stale
1/2 cup butter
5 to 6 stalks of celery (about 2 cups), coarsely chopped
1 large (softball-sized) sweet onion, coarsely chopped (again, about 2 cups)
1 pound fresh button mushrooms, sliced about 1/3 inch thick
1/4 teaspoon sage
fresh-ground white pepper to taste
1 cup turkey broth (you can make your own, using the giblets & neck plus bay leaves, pepper, etc., or buy a low-sodium canned variety of your choice)

Directions:
In a large frying pan or wok, melt 1/2 the butter. Stir-fry celery, onions with sage and pepper, until they turn transparent. Put aside in large bowl. Put remaining butter in pan, at high temperature, sauté the mushrooms only until tender and golden. Add back, into the wok, the celery/onion mix, bring to high heat, add 1/2 cup broth. Remove from heat.

Lightly toss into stale cornbread (it's better stale than toasted, for some reason only a mad scientist might be able to explain), gradually adding the remaining 1/2 cup broth as needed. You don't want to make it soggy, so go lightly -- when all the crumbs are moistened, stop adding broth.

Put into oven during the last hour that the turkey is roasting, allow to bake for that full hour, to develop a nice golden crust on top and a steamy inside.

If you cook this in the turkey cavity, be sure to check the bird's interior temperature very carefully to make sure it's done... and remove the stuffing from the cavity immediately upon removing the turkey from the oven.

Variations: Fresh cranberries may be added to the celery/onions at the beginning of cooking, for a livelier color and tangy flavor -- and be alert! They "pop" when they're ready.

Also, dried apple chips, chopped dried apricots, or finely chopped red bell pepper may be added to the cornbread just before mixing in the sautéed vegetable mixture.

But the point is to keep it simple.

You can actually prepare all the ingredients separately, several days in advance of the feast, and tuck them away to be heated and mixed right before they are to go into the oven. That is, in fact, what I've done this week.



I'll assemble all the parts once I'm in the distant kitchen, and that way we won't run any added risk of contamination (since food poisoning is so much in the news, this month).

And, it is here that I say, thank modern technology for plastic containers! They also make great gifts... the sort which you can stuff with all sorts of goodies, in order to enhance their value.