Simply Lou: Dressin’ Not Stuffing

article and illustration by Lou Davenport

Ahhhh! November will be here by the time you read this or very close to it. Happy Halloween if it’s still October and Happy Birthday to my daughter, Paige, who was born on Halloween!

But, back to November. How I love that month, because my wonderful and crazy family gathers for Thanksgiving! Last year was a sad one for us, we’d lost two of our “older generation,” and nobody was in the mood to celebrate. We did the best we could ,and we did manage to have some laughs and definitely celebrated their lives.

This year is going to be a lot different and a lot better. For the past 25 years or more, we have gathered at my cousin Judi’s for Thanksgiving. We’ve followed her from house to house as she moved! I missed several of the big get-together dinners, since I lived in Vicksburg and had Thanksgiving for Larry and his Mom. He would head off to the deer camp, and I would head for Monroe with my three little ones. Back then, we could “party” for days, but, we’re down to one good day nowadays! We still enjoy our kids, and some of them have kids that we enjoy just as much. We eat, we laugh, we eat, we laugh, we might sing, we laugh, we eat, we might dance, we laugh, we eat until we are just exhausted! The food is always “fit for a king.” There’s not one bad cook in my family. I’m especially excited this year, since I have been appointed to bring the “Sweet Potato Casserole with Praline Topping” just like Aunt Red used to bring. I have some big shoes to fill, but I think I’m up to the challenge! I still have my cookbook, “Cotton Country,” where that particular recipe originated. My poor book is in pieces, but I just do not have the heart to buy a new one. I’ve had that book since I first got married. Aunt Mayvonne gave it to me as a wedding gift for she also knew I was going to need a lot of help learning to cook! Oh! If that book could talk! You can tell by all the stained pages recipes I “fixed” the most!

I see names under the recipes that I later met when I first moved back to Monroe and worked at the Masur Museum of Art. I usually get a little “emotional” when I get that book out! But, after all these years, I have never made anything from it that has not been delicious!

As I said before, most everybody in my family are incredible cooks. One is even a professional chef in 5 star restaurants! That’s Cousin Ronnie, and he can make anything taste good. You can give him peanut butter, jelly and bread, and he’ll come up with something that will not only be beautiful, but it would taste so good, you will slap yo mama into next week!

The rest of us are not professionals, just really good cooks. All of us make dressin’……not “stuffing.” That’s what Northern people call it, and their “stuffing” just “don’t impress me none!” It sort of has the consistency of snot. If there’s not cornbread in it, it’s not dressin’. Years ago Aunt Red and Aunt Mayvonne were in a constant competition in everything they cooked but none as famous as “The Battle of the Dressin’s.” That was serious business. Then, there’s the decision of “jellied” or “home-made whole berry” sauce or that “dreaded” giblet gravy. They can keep that gray-brown giblet gravy. I could live the rest of my life in sheer bliss, if I never ever had to SEE that ugly concoction again! I gotta have the cranberries, and I don’t care which one. I’ll take both, if I can get em! I would usually slip by without having to vote which dressin’ was the best cause there was no contest. They were both GOOD!
Cousin Judi’s dressin’ is the most traditional Southern Cornbread Dressing. It’s got homemade cornbread, onions, celery, bell pepper, sometimes crumbled crackers, sometimes crumbled bread. There’s eggs, milk, chicken broth and salt and pepper. It’s good stuff and there’s usually not much left.
Cousin Margaret is the gourmet cook of us all. She had an oyster dressing last year that I ate so much of, I had to go lay down. Then I drank too much champagne and ended up with my face in my cake. Yeah, that was a grand ol’ Thanksgiving! I was “very” thankful! I may have enjoyed it “too much!” I’m usually better behaved!

My dressing is a little on the artsy side I guess. I got the main idea of it from Jim Varney (who used to play “Hey Vern, it’s Ernest) when he was on a talk show on the Nashville Network. Mine is still fairly close to his, God rest his soul. Gotta have homemade cornbread. I can’t make cornbread in anything but a very old iron skillet that belonged to our Grandmother Lilly. Then I brown sausage and chop a lot of celery, onions, green onions and tops, parsley, bell pepper and dump all that in with the cornbread along with with a couple of jars of button mushrooms. I sprinkle poultry seasoning, salt and pepper on it fairly heavily, then pour in a half gallon of Half and Half, about 8 eggs, chicken broth and a little bit of melted butter. I mix it all up real good til it’s “soupy” enough for me. Then bake it til it’s brown around the edges and a knife comes out clean in the middle. It’s good, but, I always deliver a warning with my “dressin’.” It has powerful “anesthetic” properties. It’ll put you to sleep! No, it’ll Knock You Out! And, I don’t use a recipe. I just do it by memory and taste. Eating raw eggs hasn’t killed me yet.

Thanksgiving before last, I was in Texas visiting with my son, Adam and his family, Chelsey and Dakota. We were invited to a really nice Thanksgiving dinner at a friend of theirs who lives in a “for real” renovated Texas farmhouse. There were people from all over the world there. I taught him how to make my dressing, and it was such a hit. I got about a tablespoon of it! I didn’t get my “quota” of dressin’ for Thanksgiving, so we made some for ourselves the next day. About an hour later, we were all napping! It has powers!

My daughter, Carolyn, makes another yummy kind of dressing. She found her recipe on “The Pioneer Woman” and as big of a purist as I am, (really, I am a “dressin’” snob) I have to say, this “dressin’” is good! It does have some cornbread in it so she gets a pass. Along with the cornbread, she uses French bread and Ciabatta Bread. She’s made it several times for us, and every time she’s had satisfied diners. That’s so Un-Southern, but it’s so good, she gets a gold star.

I’ve had to learn to pace myself at our big get-together dinners. I call it “grazing” now. That way I don’t get sleepy, have to do a “lay down,” fall asleep and miss anything! And I have reached the age, just like “The Aunts,” that I have to make myself a “take home” box with as much as I can cram in it. That way I enjoy Thanksgiving for a few more days! (and I don’t have to cook!) They knew things that I’m just now figuring out!

Yes, we “graze” all day, but there’s other things going on at the big get-togethers. We’ve been known to sing….and none of us can sing very well. We don’t care; it’s fun. We have danced before and that would have gone viral if somebody recorded it. We can’t dance either but, again, we don’t care, we “think” we can!

All the “cousin” dogs will be there, “Walter,” “Scotty,” and “Lilly” for starters. “Walter” and “Scotty” play so hard they just fall out from exhaustion. It takes Walter days to recover. I’m making him an Indian headress to wear this year. He is my “Kemo Sabe.”

I sent off my DNA to Ancestry.com a while back. The results I got back were somewhat surprising. I found out I am 44% Irish/Scottish, 26% Western Europe and 30% Scandanavian! I always knew we were a bunch of loud and proud Irishmen! And, I have always been curious about where a lot of us in my family got blonde hair and these blue/green eyes. Now I know! We are VIKINGS! SHIELD WALL! No wonder I love that show so much.

So, armed with all this new familial knowledge and my “Sweet Potato Casserole” I shall go forth and and say to you, “Here’s to Hell! May the stay there be as fun as the way there!” Happy Thanksgiving Y’all!