Too. Much. Stuffing.

The food I like the most at Thanksgiving is the stuffing.

This year we didn't eat Thanksgiving with our families, so we ate it with some friends instead.

I made the stuffing.  Now, I've never really watched my Mom make the stuffing.  While speaking with my sister over the phone, she opined that Mom fried bacon and added that to the mix... but I digress.  I flipped through the Joy of Cooking and found a recipe that had most of Mom's ingredients in it -- just one problem, it's not really a recipe so much as a list of things that one could put into a stuffing if one so desired; even the measurements are suggestions.  

The other thing:  not only do we live in the Coupled Lesbian Capitol of the World, and the Tie-Dye Capitol of the World, we also live in Oregon's Largest Vegetarian Enclave.   So, no turkey.  My work-around to not being able to mix in giblets and sew the stuffing into a neck cavity was to use boxed turkey gravy as a sauce.

So let's see... a loaf of bread, a bunch and a half of celery, two boxes of mushrooms, a onion, garlic, sage (and other random herbs because we were out of paprika), a package of cashews and more butter than I care to think about later and I've got a Very Large Bowel full of stuffing.  It looks like Mom's stuffing, but more importantly, it smells like Mom's stuffing.  

Lots of stuffing.  I was going to cook it in the Very Large Bowl, but Mark suggested that the manufacturer might not have had ovens in mind when they made it.   I had enough to fill two big casserole dishes.  

The dinner was lots of fun.  One of the female teens called into question the manliness of one of the male teens because he took the smallest portions possible -- "So," I asked her, smiling, "Are you saying that I'm more manly that he is?"  Since I was wearing what Mark calls my "Lesbian High Priestess" outfit (beige jacket with padded shoulders, purple iridescent scarf) she started to say yes, but then faltered.  

There were three carnivores at Thanksgiving.  One brought a chicken.  Not only did I eat way too much, but I've got a Large Deep Dish of Stuffing living, untouched, in our fridge.   Oh, and dirty dishes in the sink; which means I have to waddle to the kitchen and start putting things away.