Stuff It!

I never had stuffing that didn't come in a box. That's only sort of true- my mom makes cornbread dressing every year for the holidays, but I don't consider it stuffing since there are things like eggs and...gizzards in it. So other than my mother's concoction, I never had homemade stuffing. Until this past Thanksgiving when I decided to make stuffing balls for my parents. And then I fell in love with stuffing, the real stuff (no pun intended).

It's so easy to make. I don't mind cooked celery in food, but every time I have raw celery I feel compelled to eat it and then it makes me want to vomit because I hate the taste. And I never have celery "just sitting around," so I rarely think to make stuffing. But I'm always looking for the opportunity.

I had some left over yellow and green bell pepper from the Superbowl Party. Don't judge me on how long I keep my food...if it looks ok and smells ok, I eat it. I learned it from my dad who would always say, "You know, we didn't have expiration dates when I was growing up." Why follow an artibtrary date on something when you could use your senses to determine if it's still good...but I digress.

So, I satueed a giant red onion (75 calories) , 75% of each bell pepper (the other 25%'s went to the quiche's)(60 calories), and 6 cloves of garlic (20 calories) in 2 TB of Earth Balance Vegan margarine (200 calories). When it got clear but not brown, I took it off the heat and added 1.5 teaspoons of poultry seasoning (I held myself back from 2-2.5 teaspoons, which, looking back, I should have gone with) and some black pepper. I'd left out 12 pieces of bread overnight to get stale. Ok, 13 pieces, but I had to put a few of them in the oven to speed up the drying process and one sat on the bottom shelf a tad bit too long. So, I ripped up my 12 pieces of whole wheat bread (480 calories, but I buy strangely low-cal bread) into a giant bowl, added the onions, and moistened with 1.25 cups of unsweetened soy milk (80 calories) because I had no broth on hand. Mixed with my hands until the bread was no longer crunchy and placed in a 2 qt round Pyrex baking dish. 40 minutes with lid on 350ish and then another 3-5 under the broiler without lid to get the top nice and crispy. I took it out of the oven and it looked like the bell peppers separated from each other- half the dish had chunks of yellow and the other half green. Interesting.

I think the entire dish was about 900-1000 calories and I ate half of it, even though I had to tear myself away from the rest.

It was wonderful...way better than the boxed crap. Next time I will definitely have mushroom broth sitting around to make it a little richer, but I was pleased with the soy milk. I might also try some type of nuts in it.

As Dora would say, Yum yum yum, delicioso!