Thanksgiving is all about stuffed birds....and my family is no different

So maybe Thanksgiving is all about the turkey, but after years of dried out terrible turkey growing up I cannot bring myself to buy one, so if your looking for turkey advice I sadly have very little. My family loves all things bread so stuffing is a requirement for all holiday gatherings if you want to make it through dinner without too many complaints. So this year I set out to infuse the horrific stuffing dish that stuffs our waistlines with some veggies. Please don't get me wrong stuffing is a far cry from a healthy dish, but if your family must have it sneak in some veggies.

 

So I took the requisite bag of processed bread chunks and set it on the counter a few weeks ago for inspiration. Let me tell you while standing at my juicer half awake and seeing the processed chunks taunting me is something that I will not miss. So let’s talk about how I managed to take a dish that I dread watching my family eat no stuff into their faces and make it a little less cringe worthy.

 

Ingredients:

1 bag of prepared herb bread chunks

1 bunch of celery (mine had 8-10 ribs on it)

1 medium yellow onion

3 sprigs of thyme

1 sprig of rosemary

1 bag of fresh cranberries (remove any hard or super soft cranberries)

8-10 sprigs of parsley

2 apples (I used Fuji as they were getting to the end of their usability)

First I chopped the celery, onion, and apples into bite size chunks and placed them into a mixing bowl. I pinched the leaves off parsley sprigs until I had about a cup, add in the rosemary leaves (I don’t use the stalk but pull the leaves off by running my nail against the growth pattern) and rough chop them. Add the chopped parsley and rosemary to the mixing bowl, then work on the sage. My thyme leaves were pretty small so I just added them directly to the bowl after I pulled them off the stalk the same way I pulled the rosemary off the stalk. Then I added the cranberries to the vegetable mix and let the flavors meld. Truth be told I pre-cut the veggies in the morning, added in the cranberries, and stored the mix for several hours in an airtight container to make my dinner preparations that much easier.

 

When it was time to make dinner all I had to do was mix the vegetables mix into the bread crumbs, add 4 tablespoons of melted butter (I use hormone free butter over the fake margarine but I am pretty certain margarine will work as well.) and 5 cups of boiling water to the mix and bake in the oven for 30 minutes at 325 degrees or until the cranberries burst. I cooked this the same time that I heated up the pre-made cinnamon sweet potatoes. Please forgive the awful cell phone pic of the finished stuffing, even my bread loving don't make me touch salad family approved of the additional veggies added in and have asked for it again on Christmas.