Doing Dressing

Though Thanksgiving is still a couple of weeks away, I currently have a huge amount of celery and onions. With the possibility of those ingredients going bad, of course I would never want to waste a stalk of celery. Therefore, I have chopped all the celery and three big onions along with fresh garlic and have sautéed all in a stick of butter. After cooling, the vegetables will be zip bagged and stuck in the freezer to pull out in two weeks when I assemble my dressing. The cornbread will also be baked for the freezer today for usage in 2 weeks. Last year was my first time to put together dressing 2 days before the actual feast, thanks to a tip from a good cookfriend. I watched my mother do the dressing on the day of Thanksgiving always because of the baking turkey drippings. Last year I just used low-sodium chicken stock without the turkey drippings. The turkey drippings, however, were not wasted. After defatting, those drippings were added to the gravy on the day of our big feast. You can also drizzle some of the drippings on top of your dressing before baking. One more step  to simplify Thanksgiving morning - get that dressing DONE before all of your guests arrive. Have a mimosa that morning and chill! And, yes, my third child has provided today's illustration with her very own hands and machine.