Stuff Puppies

Earlier in the week, I told you about the Sous Chef's side of the family and their annual Thanksgiving tradition: frying the turkey.  I also told you I decided to fry something else that day...

My dad's famous Sage Stuffing.

His recipe is the stuff (pun intended) of legends - in our family, it simply isn't Thanksgiving or Christmas unless there's sage stuffing.

Garnering this recipe, however, has proven to be quite difficult.  You see, getting a detailed recipe out of my dad is like trying to get a detailed recap of a school day out of a four-year-old:

"Honey, what did you do at school today?"

"Nothing."

"Really?  Nothing?"

"I ate snack."

"Oh, that's nice." (Mental note:  Call the teacher.)

And here's a typical recipe from my dad:

"How many apples, Dad?"

"Oh, three or four."

"And how much cinnamon?"

"I don't know, a tablespoon or so."

"And how much butter do you put on it?"

"Enough until it looks right."

"Oh, that's nice."

This is why, when the time came for him to make his famous sage stuffing this Thanksgiving, I decided that asking him for the recipe would be an inane exercise in body language-reading, shrug-deciphering, and finger distance-estimating.  I decided to just watch him make it.

Here's what's in it: A package of stuffing bread cubes, ground sage, canned mushrooms, chopped onions, melted butter, chicken broth, and eggs.

If I told you any more details, my dad might disown me.  And I don't think I could make it through Christmas without sage stuffing.  So there you have it.

I whipped up a batch and brought it to Thanksgiving and let it take a bath with the turkey.  First, of course, we had to assemble it into cute balls:

There's nothing like rolling stuffing into balls while sipping on some American Honey out of one of Grammy's retro juice glasses!

Next, it was time to take a swim in the huge vat of bubbling peanut oil - luckily, even though there was a ginormous turkey in there, there was still plenty of room for the balls:

After rolling in the peanut-scented waves for a few minutes, they looked like this:

I dare you to tell me this doesn't look good...

We barely had time to let these bad boys cool before people were plucking them off of the platter.

Frying experiment success - Stuff Puppies!

Doesn't the one in the foreground resemble a turkey?

Note the big chunks of onion and mushroom - so good.

Eat well.