“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 617 (Tuesday)

After a workday of projects progressing and things running mostly smoothly, a realization hit. Thanks to a planned vacation day on Friday and the holiday on Thursday, although it’s Tuesday, it’s basically my Friday Eve. As they say in response to practically everything in The Great, my current hulu streaming obsession, huzzah!

My contribution to Thanksgiving dinner is the family stuffing recipe, which, according to the most technical terms, will be “dressing” this year, as it will be cooked outside the bird. Monday night, the preparation began with the onion, pork, and hamburger mixture. 

Friday night, while grocery shopping, the display of instant mashed potatoes was bypassed, thinking there were two packets at home. It turned out the two packets were actually one of vegetable soup and dip mix, and one of cheddar mashed potatoes. It was impossible to find packages of hamburger and pork smaller than one pound each, which meant having twice as much meat as was needed. Thank goodness for the two containers of farm fresh Maine potatoes that had been boiled, mashed, and frozen a few weeks ago. Huzzah!  

The recipe, not made in about eight years, has some gray areas. The first step is to sauté the onion then add the pork and hamburger and brown. That part is easy and was Monday evening’s entertainment. The mixture was refrigerated.

The next step reads “Combine all ingredients in bowl.” Those ingredients are mashed potatoes, three celery stalks, half a bag of Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix (no particular package size noted) and spices.  

So much stuff ...

After it was already sliced, dumped in a bowl, and covered in the measured spices, it seemed that maybe the celery should have been sautéed with the onion. Oops. It’s not mentioned in the directions. 

The mess is intended to go into the bird, so there aren’t any baking instructions, although there was almost always excess that was baked in a dish. Thank goodness my standard cooking rule of 30 minutes at 350 degrees often does the trick.

The double meat ration provided two options – double the whole recipe or set half the meat aside for something later. It seemed easier to double it, which filled an 8.5” by 13” baking dish for Mon’s and an 9” x 7” dish for my house. That’s a lot of dressing. Huzzah!

Guess what was for supper? It’s not exactly like I remembered it, which was with more potato. And it’s definitely moister and when cooked inside the bird. Maybe gravy will help on Thursday.