Stuffed on Stuffing

I hope everyone had a great holiday or day off, and it was relaxing and full of awesomeness. Although exhausting, mine was pretty spectacular. I haven't had a real holiday at home with my family in a couple of years, between being with a significant other or my family being out of town. This Christmas, however, there were no vacations or significant others, so I got to enjoy all of my family on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

On the 24th, my mom typically hosts a small family shindig, where everyone comes over, we play games, hang out and make hor d'oeuvres. Because my father (and now brother-in-law) are atkins people, the spread usually consists of mostly meat/cheese items with a couple of carb extras. Aside from crackers, there was not anything I could eat, so I whipped up my most awesome hummus and ate it with asparagus, carrots and crackers. Food didn't really matter though as I took advantage of having a weekend off after a very stressful work week and drank enough to quote from "Monster"* and learn the "Cleveland Shuffle" with my sister.

You can barely see it, but my hummus is behind the meatballs. In my inebriated state, I added bits of asparagus to "fancy it up"

Christmas morning my sisters and their families returned for breakfast, presents and dinner. I didn't realize the impact that a vegan lifestyle had taken on me until my mom started preparing the turkey for the oven and I started crying thinking about all that turkey went through before it died. Yeah, yeah, I know, shut it.

I didn't need turkey though because I prepared a most awesome vegan stuffing. I also had a pretty awesome Christmas dinner that consisted of corn, spinach, asparagus and cranberries in addition the stuffing, and ate more than I thought possible. Anyways, I made a similar stuffing for Thanksgiving but noticed that I was missing something in my flavor, so I tried again, severely tweaking what I had. I started with organic sourdough bread that I let sit out for a day and a half before breaking it up in tiny little bite sized pieces.

I then sauted my vegetables and soy meat, and rehydrated my craisins in chickn stock. I highly prefer this to vegetable stock for this dish. It's usually 1 bullion cube per 2 cups of water, but I used 2 bullion cubs in 2.5 cups of water. Overall, I thought it was pretty fantastic and much better the second day. Those that ate it (my mom and sister) really enjoyed it too.

The best part of it was while cooking my dad kept asking me in a surprised way if I was cooking sausage. I told him a couple of times that it was soy, but he either didn't hear me or wasn't paying attention. Right before assembling it, he asked to have a bite of the "meat," loaded up his fork, took a bite, then looked at my mom and said "...this isn't real." His face was pretty awesome. Who knows, maybe one day I'll convert him from his meat based diet. Probably not though.

Stuffing

1lb of day old bread (preferably sourdough)

1lb vegan sausage

1 large onion

2 celery stalks

2-3 garlic gloves

2.5 cups "chickn" broth

1/2 c craisins

sage, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper to taste

Rip the stale bread into pieces and place in casserole dish. In a large saute pan, add olive oil and cook the onions, garlic and celery over med heat for 5 min. Add the meat and seasonings and cook until the meat browns, around 7 min. Add the mixture to the bread and mix. Then add the broth and rehydrated craisins and mix well. Cover and bake at 350 for 30 min, then remove the foil and cook for 10 min longer, careful to not overcook and dry out your stuffing.

I don't have a final picture of it, but it was pretty. I actually recommend cooking it the night before

so that the bread can soak up all the flavor.

*We're not a weird or crazy family. The events surrounding "Monster" are horrible and deplorable but for some reason the women in my family have developed a crazy attachment to this amazing film, and it just isn't a get together with the Rush women without this movie being mentioned or acted out.**

**Not the rape/murder/lesbian scenes, obvs.