Sorry I’ve gone dark. Scott had a health issue come up and I’ve been focused on dealing with it more than anything else right now.
He’s going to need surgery, which will probably take place in December, but assuming all goes well with that he should recover completely.
So now I have something else to be thankful for tomorrow.
Yesterday, while I was up on campus at an all-day class thing (ugh), Scott met with our friend Katie to plan out the menu for Thanksgiving. I won’t be doing much for the festivities other than acting as Scott’s prep cook, but I will be making the stuffing as well as an appetizer.
I originally found this recipe on, of all places, the now-defunct webvan.com site back in the fall of 2000, when Scott and I were getting ready to cook our first big Thanksgiving dinner. I’ve made it pretty much every year since then. It’s tasty and not at all difficult; the biggest challenge is the prep time, which can take a while what with all the chopping and bread drying.
Anyway, here it is. I’d be happy to e-mail a file with the recipe on request:
Cornbread and Sage Dressing
Ingredients:
1 9″ x 9″ cornbread
1 16-ounce loaf sourdough bread
2 cups diced bacon
1 cup diced onion
1 cup diced carrot
2 tablespoons fresh sage chiffonade
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 cup half-and-half
1 cup chicken stock
Preparation:
Preheat oven to 375° F. Cut the cornbread and the sourdough bread into 1/2 inch cubes. Spread onto baking trays and bake for 15 minutes or until the bread has dried out. Set aside in a large mixing bowl.
Cook the bacon in a large frying pan over medium heat until it begins to crisp. Add the onions and carrots. Cook until the onions soften and start to turn translucent (about 5 minutes). Add the sage, salt and pepper. Turn heat to low and cook an additional 10 minutes.
Add the contents of the pan to the mixing bowl and gently mix with the bread cubes. Add the stock and the half-and-half, continue mixing until the dressing is moist and well blended. I usually use my hands for this but a large wooden spoon is good too.
Put the mixture into a 13″ x 9″ x 2″ greased baking pan. Cover with tin foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove cover and bake an additional 15 minutes or until the top is crispy.
Substitutions:
If you want to add more turkey flavor, use turkey stock instead of chicken and/or spoon some turkey pan drippings onto the dressing.
Use 1 teaspoon dried sage instead of fresh sage if you can’t get fresh.
If you can’t get sourdough bread, then nice peasant bread would work too.
Notes:
This is dressing, not stuffing, and should not be cooked inside the bird.
I use a cornbread mix to make the cornbread, but if you want to save time, buy one from a store.
Prepping the bread can be done the day before and the bread kept, loosely covered, overnight. Use day-old bread for faster drying.
I usually use beef bacon instead of pork due to having been raised in a somewhat kosher home, although given that there’s also half-and-half in the mix, this recipe is in no way kosher. If you used all kosher ingredients and replaced the half-and-half with more stock, it could be easily made so.
It is really easy, especially here in urban, sophisticated California, to make fun of rural Texas. So when I read this piece in the Wall Street Journal today, I have to say, I was really impressed. I have a student subscription, so I’m not sure if the article is firewalled or not. I’ll excerpt as much as I can.
At the sound of a tone blown over a large conch shell, 17-year-old senior defensive tackle Alex Kautai threw off his helmet, freeing a mane of curly black hair. He shouted several sentences in a foreign tongue and waved his arms as 93 visibly agitated teammates gathered behind him on the sidelines. Alex Kautai of the Trinity Trojans does the haka dance in Bedford, Texas.
On cue, they dropped into a wide, crouching stance and began the ritual known as the haka. “Ka Mate! Ka Mate! Ka Ora!” (We’re going to die! We’re going to die! We’re going to live!), they chanted in unison as the fans went wild. For the next 60 seconds, the players acted out an ancient battle in which a big hairy man saves the life of a Maori chieftain.
With each phrase, the players slapped their thighs, arms or chests. They stomped back and forth, symbolically thrusting and jabbing at the enemy. At the end of the dance, Mr. Kautai jumped in the air and landed on one foot, his right fist in the air and his tongue lolling out of his mouth as he sneered fiercely.
[snip]
Most of the 24 players of Tongan descent on the Trinity football team weigh between 250 and 308 pounds and stand at least 6 feet tall. Besides that, they are quick, so the combination makes Trinity an intimidating force on any high-school field. The Tongan players helped transform Trinity into a Texas football powerhouse.
Last year, Trinity won the Class 5A Division 1 state football championship. It went undefeated in this year’s regular season and administered an old-fashioned 40-14 whupping to the Permian Panthers. Trinity begins the first round of state playoffs Friday night against nearby Arlington Martin High School.
“We do the haka to ignite the breath of competition. It means that I’ve got your back and you’ve got mine,” said Mr. Kautai, who stopped shaving and let his hair grow long this season to make himself look even more intimidating than he already does at 6-foot-2 and 280 pounds. He likes to splash water on his face and hair before the haka so it will fly off in a mist as he performs the movements.
[snip]
The team first performed the haka for fans at the beginning of the 2005 season. Concerned about seeming to taunt opponents unfairly, the coach restricted the haka performance to the sidelines at the end of the field where most Trinity students sit.
It was an instant hit. Today, the stands closest to where the team performs the chant are full an hour before kickoff. An eerie silence falls over the stadium as soon as the tone is sounded on the conch shell as fans strain to hear the haka leader urging on the team.
Fans wave haka signs and wear black “Got Haka?” T-shirts. Rather than race to the parking lot to beat the crowd at the end of the game, hundreds of people routinely wait 20 minutes or more for the team to do the haka one more time.
The team has performed the haka at elementary-school assemblies in order to fire up the children before state-mandated tests. It has performed for the City Council. Before last year’s championship game, one fifth-grade class learned the haka and performed it to cheer on their newfound heroes.
Very cool. And this is Bush country, deep-red, rural Texas, mind you. Perhaps there’s hope.
Seen in Flickr today. Apparently it’s a gag, not for real.
On the one hand, this type of commercial would be a natural extension to the existing “I’m a Mac / I’m a PC” campaign Apple has been running.
On the other hand, would doing so give the Zune too much legitimacy? Probably.
Actually, it wasnt all that strange., but the fact that I can actually remember any of it several hours after I woke is a little unusual.
The dream:
I was sitting in a Starbucks in a new town. Perhaps I was having a conversation with someone, or perhaps I had just finished the conversation. And then, I turned around and asked the barista behind the counter for a job application.
It doesn’t take a professional headshrinker to guess that I’m processing some anxiety about my upcoming graduation. I started the path to my MBA in the expectation that it would help me get back onto the career track I was jerked off of back in 2002. But expectations are one thing. Finally, the time is coming where I find out whether that was a good decision or not, and I’m scared.
Small wonder I’m dreaming about running back to the security of Starbucks, even if in the light of day, it’s obvious that doing so would be a massive waste of my tuition. You don’t need an MBA to pull shots and wash out the steamed milk pitchers.
The 2008 campaign season, I mean.
I’m sad about Feingold. I’m not sure he could have won, but I really wanted to see him try.
Who’s next?