Apple Cornbread Mushroom Stuffing with Bacon

This year I attended a potluck Thanksgiving. When asked what I wanted to bring, I knew it had to have apples in it. The friends with whom I was staying during my transition back to Berkeley, have a very abundant apple tree in their back yard. We had pots full of recently picked apples. I decided to make an apple cornbread dressing. with ingredients like grains, nuts, meat, vegetables, fruit and herbs, stuffing can be a whole meal by itself.

I went to the internet to get a general idea of ingredients, proportions and steps in stuffing recipes. I noticed a quite a few called for eggs. I guess they help hold the ingredients all together like a soufflé, but that wasn’t the consistency I was looking for.

I decided to use boxed cornbread to cut down on time and because I’ve never been that happy with my homemade cornbread as it always tends to be too dry and somewhat flavorless. I’ve always liked Jiffy box cornbread for the end product and its simplicity, but when I looked at the ingredients this time, I was discouraged. Lots of chemical ingredients I couldn’t pronounce (breaking 2 of Michael Pollen’s food rules) and it has lard in it. I wonder how many vegetarians know that. I was making a portion of the batch for vegetarians so that wouldn’t work out. I decided to give Trader Joe’s cornbread mix a try – it still had unrecognizable ingredients, but not as many, and it is vegetarian. However it turned out way too moist and sweet for a savory, stuffing dish. I ended up drying out the cubes in the oven. Next time I will make my own, dry cornbread!

Cornbread tends to be pretty crumbly, so in order to have some shape in the dish, I included French bread that I got from nearby Acme bakery.

For more inspiration I went to one of the local produce markets, Monterey Market. After being in Philadelphia for four years, I was blown away at how much locally grown produce is available this time of year and how cheap it was. 3 bunches of celery for $1 and organic, spinach for $.69/lb! I like how the market labels every product with its origin, including the state. I was lured by all the varieties of mushrooms and decided to include wild chantrelles from Oregon in my dish.

Here’s a recipe based on what I made (not totally exact as I didn’t take measurements). It serves about 12 – 16 as a side dish

1 box of baked cornbread for an 8x8 pan – cut into cubes and dried out

1 baguette – cut into cubes and dried out.

1.5 onions diced

3 –4 stalks of celery diced

olive oil or butter (or both)

1/2 lb to 3/4 bacon – chopped

1 lb of mushrooms, roughly chopped

white wine to taste

3 to 4 apples – peeled, cored and chopped

1/2 c toasted, slivered almonds

vegetable broth (about 2 cups, but use your discretion, depending on how moist you want your stuffing)

chopped herbs – sage, thyme, parsley

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375. Fry the bacon until cooked. Drain on paper towels and save some of the lard for use later. In a separate pan, sauté the onions in some butter or olive oil until soft, add the celery and apples until soft. Then add the mushrooms, which cook quickly, some white wine floor flavoring, the sage and thyme, and more butter or oil if needed. Cook down until the mushrooms are starting to get soft and tender. In a big pot, put in some of the lard (optional for more flavor) and heat until liquefied. Then add the rest of the cooked ingredients and bacon. Stir in all the bread cubes and mix. Add vegetable broth to moisten the mixture – should be moist but not liquidy. Then add the toasted almonds and chopped parsley. Add salt and pepper to taste. Transfer to a glass or ceramic baking dish and bake until crispy – about 30 minutes.

The bacon and lard can be omitted if you want to make a vegetarian option.

The next morning we scrambled some of the leftover stuffing into eggs for breakfast. I guess that’s like adding the eggs I saw in some of the recipes online that I initially was dubious about!

Turkey Drive

The weekend before Thanksgiving, Robert’s men’s group, EBNOM, (The East Bay Nation of Men) held their annual turkey drive at the Neighborhood House of North Richmond. For 20 years they have been organizing this volunteer effort where they raise money and labor to provide Thanksgiving dinners for families in need. The locations of the drive vary with last two being held at the senior center. For as little as $15 they are able to provide dinner for a family of four. This is due in large part to the connections to food vendors that several of the organizers have. Given the current economic climate, this year I have been looking more actively for ways to help out my community, so I eagerly agreed to donate money and time.

We arrived before 8am in the morning and I was tasked with coordinating the effort to divide the fresh produce equally for 500 families. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many potatoes and yams in one place! There were 25 boxes of sweet potatoes and 70 – 50lb bags of potatoes! I was glad to see that they were giving away some fresh produce rather than all boxed and canned goods. There was also some fresh broccoli and onions, just not enough for all 500 bags. It definitely seemed like a daunting task – to evenly divide so much food – but we were armed with a room full of willing participants and quickly got an informal assembly line going.

Often around this time of year, the discussion about the difference between sweet potatoes and yams comes up – as it did for us. Varying explanations are offered, with most thinking the color is what differentiates them. However, according to the North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission what we call yams, orange sweet potatoes, are actually just a different variety of sweet potato. Apparently there are several hundred types of sweet potatoes! Technically, a true yam is rough and scaly and typically imported from the Carribean. We started using the term yam in order to differentiate the orange ones grown in the south.*

In the large hall there were cans of cranberries, corn and green beans, boxes of stuffing of stuffing, and bags of fresh Acme bread. The turkeys were a little late in arriving because one of the men had truck troubles - he eventually found another working truck. It was quite impressive seeing the full truck back in with the delivery of 500 turkeys. Before giving out the meals around 10am, the volunteers and staff gathered in one large circle to give thanks; for the donations, for the organizing help and for all the good things and people in our lives.

It was a very orderly affair – the people in line were patient and the volunteers organized. As not all of the families spoke English, interpreters were available to help out. Lots of enthusiastic kids were both picking up meals and helping give out the items. People signed up in advance for a free meal; however there was still enough for others who hadn’t pre-registered after those with tickets picked up their meals. We were done just before noon. Seeing all the happy faces and meeting so many enthusiastic people made me feel like I was gaining more than I was giving. I definitely plan to participate next year.

* This discussion is reminiscent of how we came to call bison “buffalo” since they looked liked similar creatures to the ones the settlers had in Europe – but once it was discovered that they are very different and new term, bison, was needed – but by then the word buffalo stuck and we still use the term interchangeably in North America.