Roman Thanksgiving Feast

Stuffing, or Dressing if you want to be technical that this hasn't been stuffed inside of anything

This is how my mom has always made this traditional Thanksgiving sidedish, and though she has never written the recipe down, I'll do what I can to be as specific as possible.

Ingredients:

• Cornbread mix (which requires eggs and milk as well)
• White bread
• Onion
• Celery
• Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme (like Scarborough Fair, the Simon and Garfunkel song)
• Poultry Seasoning
• Eggs... for boiling
• Chicken Broth 

• Brown gravy, turkey drippings, giblet gravy, or whatever you feel appropriate to moisten a drier version of this is delicious.  Otherwise, use more chicken broth and make sure to make the stuffing itself moist enough to chew and swallow. (It's also great to thicken up the gravy using the stuffing!)

Begin by mixing the cornbread as the instructions say.  Cornbread mixes without as much sugar tend to make a better stuffing.  Jiffy brand cornbread mix is really sweet, I recommend not using it (my mom forgets this every other year and thinks she should use Jiffy so our stuffing becomes too sweet).

Wash and chop all of the parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.  It is best to not use the stems because they will end up like little sticks in your food, which are unpleasant.  You will want to mix in an equal amount of all of the herbs, or use more of whatever you like best.  My mom typically just uses the dried spices for this and not fresh herbs, but nothing can compare to the taste of the fresh herbs.

Chop and saute' the onions and celery.  Once they are cooked and the herbs are chopped, mix both the herbs and vegetables in with the raw cornbread mix.  Put the cornbread mix into greased baking pans.  Keep in mind that you will have more mix than the package is taking into account because of the added ingredients.  Follow the instructions for baking on the cornbread package until the cornbread is cooked through.

Take the cornbread out and let it cool.

After this, crumble the cornbread into pieces and mix it in a pan with shredded pieces of dried or toasted white bread.  

Boil eggs and then chop them up and mix in with the cornbread mixture.  I used 4 eggs, but if you like eggs a lot or are looking to have a more protein in your diet, you may enjoy some more.  

Pour at least a few cups of chicken broth on the stuffing before baking it again because it is important that it not dry out and get overcooked now that the cornbread is crumbled.  Bake again for another 20 minutes or however long.  Take it out of the oven, stir again, add more chicken broth, and bake more.  You can essentially carry out this process until you either need the room in your oven for something else or the rest of your meal has finished cooking and you're ready to serve the stuffing.