Penance (without pictures): Garlic Bread Stuffing

I have been a bad blogger indeed. My failure is made less noticeable by the other wonderful women that I share this blog with and their ability to do what they are supposed to do. But I will make it up to you. I will translate "I will update good noms every Wednesday, without fail" into Latin and write it in cursive 500 times!

Or, I could give you a recipe for garlic bread stuffing that made everyone happy and my young neighbor who won't eat vegetables eat celery without complaining.

Actually, I like that idea better.

Unfortunately, I will have to add in the pictures for this when I get back to California, since I left my camera cord there.

YOU WILL NEED:

• 1 roasting bird (chicken, duck or duckling, turkey, goose, pheasant, quail et cetera).
• About half a loaf of ciabatta, or similar, bread. A little stale is OK.
• 1 large cooking onion
• 2 stalks of celery
• 3 cloves of garlic
• olive oil
• oregano, basil (fresh is always the best) salt, black pepper and cheyenne pepper (to taste)
• The juice of half a lemon

To start, heat your oven to 400 degrees (F). Have your bird prepared: defrosted, cleaned out and sitting in whatever it is you opt to roast a bird in. Here's a helpful hint that I picked up along the way: if you get a bird that was butchered in a slaughter house, they may put the giblets in a plastic bag and shove it inside the bird. You should take those out. I heard that somewhere.

Chop your onions and celery first, then start cooking them in olive oil in your largest of cooking pans. I use a wok for this. Your house will fill with a delicious aroma. Make it more delicious by chopping up the garlic into nice, cajun sized pieces, which I define as being about the size of funfetti cupcake sprinkles (or a little larger, if you want to keep mosquitos from biting!) and adding that to the mix. You may need to add more oil to keep things from sticking. Be smart. Cook this until it is soft and all of it is ready to eat. The celery may still be a little stiff. This is good. Add more oil so that the mixture is a bit saturated with it (but not, you know, floating in it. We want to walk away from this meal).

Next, tear up the bread into crouton sized pieces and throw them into the pan. Cook these pieces in the onion, celery and garlic oil. Make sure to get the bread nice and toasty and to soak up the other flavors that are in the pan. At this point, you should add your herbs (but not the salt, pepper and cheyenne, they go directly on the bird).

Set this aside to cool a bit before you put it in the bird. In the mean time, prepare the bird to cook. Besides stuffing it, before putting a bird into the oven to roast I do the following:

• I squeeze the juice of half a lemon over the whole thing
• I rub salt, pepper and cheyenne into all the skin and
• I place a couple of pats of butter on it, so that this will melt and cook into it in the oven. I know, this one isn't particularly healthy, but I love butter.

After you have done those things, you are ready to stuff the bird. Use a large spoon, or, if you are daring, your hands, to shove all your delicious garlic bread into the bird's cavity. It will overflow it if it is a small bird, like mine was. I arranged the rest of it around the bird in the pan. I do not cover birds that I roast because I like them to get very done and I never find them to be dry. My mother covers hers in a tent of tin foil and they come out well, but not golden and lovely as mine. So make your choice there :D

The time it will take you to cook your bird will depend upon what kind of bird it is. For a chicken, as I prepared with this recipe, it took me about an hour and it served about four, two of whom were teenage boys. Always make sure that your poultry is properly cooked and the juices run clear before serving. If the bread starts to get dark before the bird is done, scoop out the stuffing that is outside the bird and cover it until the meal.

Mia cupola. Forgive me.