By Sandra Okamoto
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
COLUMBUS, Ga.- Around this time of year, the great debate is: Dressing or stuffing?
We asked this question to a number of people in the area and, well, it fired them up.
Southerners think cornbread dressing is the food - or at least the side dish - of the gods, while Yankees think stuffing is the only way to go.
And then there are the peacekeepers who make both.
DRESSING
"I really don't know the difference," said Sandi Lee, who owns the Raintree Farms Bed & Breakfast in Waverly Hall.
"But you want to know what I think? I think stuffing is what Yankees fix; dressing is what Southerners fix. That's what I think and I like dressing."
For dressing, she uses a mixture of biscuits and cornbread. "Aunt Ruby used to make dressing with whatever she had," said Lee, who is from Gainesville, Ga. "She threw it all together."
"Stuffing is not dressing," said Melissa Wilkey, who owns the Gingerbread House Restaurant and Gift Shop in Box Springs and who grew up in Juniper.
"Dressing can't be beat. We use grits and cornbread, chicken broth and onions. We make it from scratch."
Mary Jordan, the cook at Crawford's Cafeteria, laughs as she describes her cornbread dressing.
"It's a secret," she said. "Oh, it's just different seasonings and herbs."
The cornbread is made at the restaurant. And the recipe is a Crawford family recipe.
What makes it so good?
"I'm not sure," said Jordan, who grew up in South Georgia. "It's just the taste, I guess."
Lois McCosh has been cooking for many years. She was a regular cook on the old "Rozell" show for 37 years on WRBL-TV 3, when she was with the Eelbeck Company and the local gas company.
"I prefer dressing," she said. Her recipe was in Sara Spano's cookbook, "Through the Years," and is a favorite of a lot of people, she said.
"Most people prefer this type of dressing to stuffing," McCosh said. "If they want a real old-fashioned dressing, they use the egg bread and do it like this." Egg bread is a sort of cornbread she makes and then breaks up and puts in her dressing.
STUFFING
"I'm originally from St. Louis," said Linda Brown, who works at Columbus Cooks. "People in Missouri think they're from the South, but … They call it dressing, but it's Yankee dressing because it has bread in it instead of cornbread."
Brown says people have strong feelings for either dressing or stuffing.
And she does: "I don't like cornbread dressing."
Miriam Tidwell, who owns Miriam's Cafe and Gallery and grew up in Jacksonville, Fla., agrees.
"Unless they serve it with stuffing, it's yucky," Tidwell said. "I grew up with stuffing. I'm a bread crumb girl."
Brown makes her stuffing with bread, onions, celery. "We grow our own sage, so I like to use fresh sage.
We don't put nuts in it or cranberries or raisins."
Tidwell does put apples, celery and cranberries in her stuffing, which she calls very simple to make.
"We're voting stuffing," Tidwell said.
"It's called stuffing," said Peggy Cornwell, a drama teacher at Pacelli High School. "Dressing is what you put on salads."
Born in New York and growing up in California, Cornwell said her father was in charge of Thanksgiving dinner.
"There were 10 of us kids and we had to tear up the bread and put it in buckets. We were the bucket brigade. It was usually white bread because that's what we ate in the '50s and '60s."
Cornwell's family usually had a 30-pound turkey that was stuffed with the bread mixture, which was made with the 10 buckets of bread, celery, onions, melted margarine, turkey stock and giblets.
Now when she makes her stuffing, Cornwell adds apples and raisins.
"I'm a Yankee married to a non-Yankee," she said. And of course, her husband's mom makes cornbread dressing. "When we go to his mother's house, he'll gravitate toward hers."
And then there are those who will cook both.
Irene Champion, president of the Wynn House, home of the Christian Fellowship Association, says she always makes old-fashioned dressing.
"The New England kind," she said. "It's bread, celery, onions and sage.
"I do put it in the turkey and then I put the rest of it in the pan to bake. I have stuffing and dressing.
"I like both of them. I know there is a wide diversity of opinion on it. You probably like what you grew up with."
While she does prefer stuffing, Champion, a Columbus native, makes dressing to keep peace in the family.
"My son-in-law grew up in Griffin, and he likes cornbread dressing. We have to have both."
Champion also has to cook both a standing rib roast and a turkey. Why?
The men in her family like beef; the women like turkey.
Jose Ricci, who owns Ritmo Latino, is from Puerto Rico, and really doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, but for special dinners he does stuff a turkey.
"There is a stuffing we do in my country," Ricci said. "It is different.
We don't do it with bread."
He takes a whole chicken and boils it with salt and pepper, oregano, a bay leaf, celery and onions. After the chicken is cooked and cooled, he shreds the meat and puts the broth aside.
Then he sautes the chicken with almonds, raisins and tomato paste. The mixture is stuffed inside the turkey.
"That's how we bake our turkey," he said.
And now, here's a recipe for dressing, and one for stuffing:
OLD-FASHIONED TURKEY DRESSING
For the cornbread, or egg bread:
1 cup self-rising meal
½ cup self-rising flour
2 eggs
1 cup milk
½ cup shortening, melted
1 cup finely chopped celery
1 cup chopped onion
½ teaspoon sugar
A dash of hot sauce
Sift meal and flour together. Slightly beat eggs, adding milk, then adding to first mixture. Add remaining ingredients, beating well with a wire whisk or fork.
Bake in greased 9-inch pan - a greased iron skillet is best - at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.
To complete the dressing:
1 recipe of the cornbread
12 slices of day-old white bread
1 cup half-and-half (or equal parts milk and cream)
4 eggs
2 cups of strong turkey broth
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground pepper to taste
1 tablespoon powdered instant chicken seasoning
Tear bread into pieces, soak in milk. Beat eggs, crumble cornbread and mix together with bread and milk.
Add the other ingredients.
Pour into a well-greased 9-by-13-inch pan. Bake about 40-45 minutes in a 375-degree oven. Serves 10-12.
Recipe from Lois McCosh of Columbus in Sara Spano's cookbook, "Through the Years"
MIRIAM'S FAMOUS STUFFING
1 box pre-seasoned bread croutons
½ cup drippings from the turkey
¼ cup of chopped apples
¼ cup of dried cranberries
¼ cup of chopped celery
Mix all the ingredients together. Pour into a well-greased 9-by-13-inch pan. Bake about 25-30 minutes in a 350-degree oven or until golden brown. Serves 6-8.
Recipe from Miriam Tidwell, owner of Miriam's Cafe and Gallery.
SO WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?
Stuffing: Most recipes use white bread. It often has a loose consistency - you can spoon it into piles on your plate - and you can identify many of the individual ingredients.
Dressing: Most recipes use cornbread along with biscuits and bread. It coagulates into one mass - Yankees would say mush. And you serve it up in slabs. Many Southerners swear by it.
KRT SOUTH is a premium service of Knight Ridder/Tribune
© 2003, Columbus Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus, Ga.).
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
