i know exactly what my mom is doing today. she has started on the thanksgiving stuffing for dinner on thursday. she might also be cooking up the sweet potatoes so they can cool properly for the candied yam dish that we all love (except i think my brother andrew is still not a fan). we like our stuffing simple: bread, sage, poultry seasoning, butter, onion, and celery. we don't like nuts and dried fruits in our stuffing. or sausage. or cornbread. although we are known to boil the turkey giblets and add them to the stuffing that's not in the bird for added moisture and flavor.

when kenny and i were first dating, he wanted to make thanksgiving dinner for his parents (i think to impress me?) and couldn't find a good stuffing recipe. i told him that i had the perfect recipe, handed down to my mom from her mom (and probably from a great-grand-mother to her). i guess it was my way of impressing him: entrusting him with a family recipe.

we bought a few loaves of bread and opened the packages a day in advance (probably what mom did yesterday) so it would dry out a bit (too moist of a bread would make for too mushy a stuffing). then, on the tuesday before, you cube the bread and put all the cubes into a big white trash bag, along with the melted butter, celery, spices, and cut-up onion. kenny is still a bit uneasy about this step. he has wondered from the beginning why we use a garbage bag. if i were to ask my grammy, i'm sure she used the garbage bag for our family thanksgiving dinners at her house as well. and the answer is: because it's the only thing big enough to put in all that cubed bread and mix it up with the onion, celery, butter, and spices. it's a simple solution.

that year, i had dinner with my family while he prepared the meal for his parents and one of his brothers. i joined them for dessert later in the day. when i asked them how the stuffing turned out, the whole room fell silent. kenny answered with a question, "how much sage was i supposed to add to the garbage bag?" when i answered a few tablespoons at most, depending on the amount of bread, the silence was met with laughter.

"i guess i went a bit overboard with the sage." he admitted.

his dad said something about it tasting very earth-like (which is a nice way of saying that it tasted like dirt) and then kenny admitted to adding the entire jar of sage. which would be pretty potent. i was slightly embarrassed, but went out of my way to explain that it was kenny's mistake, and not the recipe itself that made it taste..."earth-like." yes, i chose to defend the family recipe over defending my boyfriend's culinary skills.

so there you have our traditional family stuffing recipe. i'll leave the measurements a secret for now. at least you know the secret ingredient: the garbage bag.

or is it the perfect amount of sage?