Thanksgiving Stuffing

the recipe I'm most thankful for

This recipe holds a lot of favourites for me.

Thanksgiving is my favourite holiday. This is my favourite part of the meal. And this recipe comes from my favourite uncle who would make it for us every year.

I’m not sure how most families do it, but in our family Thanksgiving dinner never changed. Every year it was the same exact food in the same place. We’d get in the car and drive to Wood’s Hole to take the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the coast of Massachusetts where Bumpy and Claire, my uncle and aunt, lived year round. The island is special all the time but is especially magical in the off-season, in the cold, the shops of Vineyard Haven decorated, with nobody but locals and wild turkeys.

My aunt would make the pies — apple, pumpkin and pecan — with my grandma’s crust recipe and my uncle would make most everything else. (My dad would bring cases of Beaujoulais Nouveau). To this day, I still insist on making the exact same meal at Thanksgiving, just like Bumpy and Claire did when we were kids. We used to start the meal with shellfish Bumpy had dug himself, oysters Rockefeller and clams casino. Then all the classics - a huge turkey, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, mashed yams or squash, creamed pearl onions, rolls, and, of course, stuffing, all doused in gravy made from the pan drippings.

I leave out the creamed onions because blech