'Twas the Week Before.....

A brief entry on preparations for holiday cooking.
Between now and Christmas Eve, I intend to post entries on Holiday dishes.....among them, stuffing, cranberry salad.....perhaps even a bit more on the bird itself.

In the meantime, start your bread drying for stuffing.......and get that bird out of the deep freeze and into the refrigerator for thawing......Now!

I use a whole loaf of bread. I generally use a 1 1/2 lb loaf of whole grain bread.
You can use any kind of bread you want to.
In years past, when I made batches of stuffing that used two and four loaves of bread, I added cinnamon bread, cinnamon raisin bread, even a cinnamom apple flavored bread. The point being that you can use any sort of bread your heart desires.
What is most important is that the bread be not merely stale but bone dry......so as to thoroughly absorb the broth and fat and flavorings and seasonings that you will add to it.
We will talk about those things later in the week, in a timely way.......in the meantime, here is a photo of my bread drying to give you an idea.



Layer the bread in a bowl or basket and put somewhere the mice won't get it.
Shuffle the bread around from day to day to expose all the surfaces to the air.

Get that Turkey out of the freezer and into the fridge......you're going to have to make an overnight place for it after you've cleaned it and seasoned it, so you might as well make room for it now......besides which, it's going to take at least 5 days to defrost to the point that you can work with it.

Bye for now.
Thus endeth the lesson...........