What's Cooking Wednesday - Curried Fruit Bread Stuffing

Thanks to Katherine Grey for taking care of Terry's Place while I was on the road yesterday.

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, I thought I'd share the stuffing recipe my family insists on. I first made it on a whim, because it was supposed to be used for stuffing a duck (or was it a goose?). At any rate, it works fine for turkey and became our tradition.

Curried Fruit Bread Stuffing

1 c finely chopped celery
1 c finely chopped onion
½ c butter
2 t curry powder
1 large pkg herb seasoned stuffing mix (cubes)
⅔ c raisins, plumped in hot water
1 can diced peaches, reserve syrup
Salt to taste

Saute celery & onion in butter until tender. Stir in curry. Toss w/ stuffing mix. Add raisins & peaches. Sprinkle w/ ¼ c syrup and toss. Season w/ salt.

Add more liquid as needed. Broth, cooking juices, etc.

From here, it's up to you. I've made this for decades, long before anyone considered actually cooking stuffing inside a turkey as a potential health hazard. Since there's no egg or meat or anything like that in the recipe, and I don't normally cook huge birds, there hasn't been a problem. However, nowadays, it's recommended that you bake stuffing (which then becomes called "dressing") outside the turkey. If you do, I suggest that you add some of the turkey drippings to the dressing before you bake it. Or when you reheat it. As with all my recipes, feel free to do what works for you.

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Homicide-Hussey: Dead Turkeys Don't Fly 1

First, thanks to Kathleen for her wonderful post, and her generous offer - there's still time to leave a comment on her post to be in the running for one of her books.

As so many of us prepare for our Thanksgiving holiday, I thought it appropriate to revisit another Homicide - Hussey post: this is part 1 of a Thanksgiving story from a cop's point of view.


One Thanksgiving morning, I was working the day shift. When you work uniform, you miss a lot of holidays with the family, and even the days that are special to everyone else end up being just 'another day in paradise' for the cops. In Lakeland in those days, the Sergeant would usually let you go home for dinner, no matter where you lived and take a long lunch with your family, depending on the call load situation.

This particular Thanksgiving I was working for Sergeant Roy Raines. Roy or 'Doc' as he was commonly referred to was a prince of a guy. He was the SWAT Team Sergeant, and was chosen for the job I suspect, because of his cool disposition under pressure. Basically, Doc didn’t worry about anything; he was just a great guy to work for.

Well it was around dinnertime, and the officers were taking their turns at meal breaks. It had been pretty quiet. One guy was working a shooting suicide, which is very common during holiday periods. People find themselves alone and depressed at a time when everyone else is getting together with family and friends. Many times the isolation is unbearable and the guy decides to check out. Sometimes, the cop who gets that call is having some of the same feelings; he’s just gotten divorced, or he’s going through an internal investigation, and just working the call sends him into a greater state of depression.

Cops are also the world’s worst at dealing with stress. The usual remedy is alcohol. I’m speaking from experience when I say, being drunk only intensifies the problem. So it goes in the cop world. Holidays are happy times for some and not so for others. Sometimes the day starts out happy and then the two most volatile, dangerously explosive chemicals in the world are mixed. No, it's not nitro, or gasoline, or even petroleum and fertilizer. I’m talking about alcohol and testosterone. The deadliest chemical mix in the world.