TURKEY STUFFING AND GRAVY
Delicious free-form recipes from my mom.

OK, the thing to remember about making dressing is that it's a free form
recipe. What changes it most is what kind of bread you use, how fine you crumble
it up, and how moist you make it. I usually make mine pretty dry and
crumble it fairly chunky.

Simmer the turkey giblets with onion, celery, celery leaves, reducing it
down to about 2/3 of the water you started with.
Make some cornbread. Or buy Pepperidge Farm bags of it. You can mix in PF
bread with the cornbread in whatever proportion you prefer.
Cut up celery and onion. 
Melt half a stick of butter or so in a deep skillet. Braise the onions
until transparent, throw in the celery, too. Add some turkey stock or
water and cook some more.

Crumble the cornbread and add the skillet mix in a big bowl. Toss around.
Add some salt, pepper and a little sage and some celery leaves torn up.
Beat an egg and add it. Then add turkey broth or water until it is moist
but not gloppy. Bake in a 9 x 13 or a loaf pan at about 325 or whatever,
covered with foil or uncovered, depending on how hot the oven has to be
for something else. Take it out after about 40 min. to an hour. What
makes it really good is to use the turkey broth from giblets for the
liquid and scatter some of the turkey drippings over it before baking,
and . You can even chop up some of the giblets in it instead of using
them in the gravy.

Sometimes I added oysters.

Gravy:
Measure out some of the bottom stuff from the turkey pan into a heavy
skillet. Add an equal amount of flour and stir for a few minutes, careful
not to scorch. A pancake turner works well. Then pour in turkey broth and
stir like crazy, then use a whisk to stir out any lumps. Or strain the
gravy. 

Then add the chopped giblets you've stewed up to make the broth. The
trick is to get the giblets going early so you have lots of broth and so
you can take the gibs out and let them cool before cutting them up for
gravy and the cats.

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