Christmas Home Tour Saturday the 5th

In the very beginning of the house building process, we decided that we wanted to be on the Paola Christmas home tour some day. Well, it is here... this coming Saturday. We were fortunate to get wonderful decorators; Kathy Peace, Cindy Porter, Pam King and Diane Husted to help us. Their visions have brought Casa Somerset to be the most beautiful decorated home I have ever lived in. They put hours and hours into it. The room shown is just one of many. We call it the Raphael room. We hope you will stop by to view our house and all of the others on Paola's Christmas home tour. Christine's future daughter-on-law, Toshia , will be baking cookies at the house that day. Her son Mark will be here as well.

You can read more about it at http://www.paolachamber.org/

AND ON THE HOME FRONT......

My son Joshua went the extra mile with the Turkey for Thanksgiving on the roof. It was a practical joke on Christine, as she is not fond of inflatables. She came home last Tuesday evening and it was up on the roof. As she drove up, she just stopped and stared at it! It was hilarious!

I hope everyone had a happy and delicious Thanksgiving! Christine and I made our usual family favorites... she did her family's choices and I made mine. She had dressing, mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole. I fixed stuffing, sweet potatoes, and brussel sprouts. We are able to agree on the turkey, so only one of those was necessary! :-)

Saturday, we went down to my daughter Heather's house for a second Thanksgiving dinner. She did a great job. They live down in Warsaw, Missouri.

Next on the family favorite calendar is Christmas Eve and Christmas day dinners....

Mike (and Christine)

Stuffing versus Dressing

Since Thanksgiving was just a week ago, I was just thinking about the little "situation" my new husband and I had with this dinner.

As we all know, Thanksgiving is a day about family and traditions. Sometimes those traditions can clash! Just like ours did last week. And the whole big issue was ...
Stuffing versus Dressing!

Mike's family has always "stuffed" their turkey with bread and other ingredients. My parents started out that way, but because we lived in California and the weather was so warm in November, we started cooking our turkey on the grill, and fixed our dressing in a casserole dish. So-o-o-o when it came time to discuss the Thanksgiving day menu, we realized we had a dilemma!

After the menu discussion with Mike, I spoke with my son Mark about it. His only comment was "Don't even think that I will eat something that was shoved up a turkey's _ _ _ !

So, on Thanksgiving day, we had stuffing and dressing, and neither side of the family would eat the other's dish! It wasn't as bad as the North vs. the South, but almost!

We also had regular mashed potatoes (my side of the family), and sweet potatoes (Mike likes those), but that is another story!!!!
Christine!!!!!!!!!!!!

The other side of the story.................

Stuffing is when you put it in the turkey, dressing is when you put it in a pan.

Let me tell you about this. I know I will get the comments about it not being safe food to cook in the turkey, but there is sooooo much love it is wonderful.


The way you do it with all of the "Love", is you get the giblets, liver, and neck out and add your trinity which is onions, carrots, and celery. Pour water over it and let it simmer. Add some fresh sage leaves. After it has slowly simmered, you chop up your giblets and liver. Add them back to the rich broth, made from love. Take the neck out.

Then you pour it over your breadcubes that you dried yourself. Be sure to add in both white and pumpernickle bread.

After that you take your turkey and mix sage and lots of rich butter and run your hand between the skin and meat of the turkey and put this mixture in. This adds so much flavor to to the stuffing.

Then start the dressing; dump a couple of bags of store bought cubes in a pan, pour some chicken broth over it, add any vegetables that you like, sprinkle some dry herbs on it and stuff both ends of the turkey. Then pop it in the oven, covered.


With Christine's method there is No Love. They love making it so much they had to do it twice:):) to get it dry enough. But that is another story.....They could only wish it tasted as good as what came out of a Turkey's behind.


Yes, the potatoes are a different story.
Mike