Sausage Fennel Stuffing (Page 380)

• Date: Thursday, November 23, 2006 - 6pm - THANKSGIVING!
• Location: Southboro, MA
• Kitchen: Richard and Anita's House
• Dining Companions: Chris, Ana, Renato, Michael, Ephraim, Richard H, Terry, Teri, Richard, Anita, and Matty
  
• Recipe Rating: B

There aren't too many stuffing recipes in The Book, and this was the only one with sausage in it -- that's why I chose it for our Thanksgiving dinner! I do love sausage. This stuffing was met with mixed reviews. Some people LOVED it (my parents for instance) while others would have prefered a more traditional stuffing (Ephriam for instance). I was actually surprised by the number of people that said that they strongly prefer a stuffing made with regular bread rather than cornbread. Cornbread is so good though! My favorite comments were from Ana, who was so confused by the concept of stuffing. This stuffing was not baked in the bird (for several reasons) so Ana thought the use of the word "stuffing" was quite odd, since nothing was stuffed! I had to agree that she had a point. I thought this recipe was fine. The flavor of anise is one of my least favorite tastes, so I wasn't too excited about stuffing with several pounds of fennel in it, but it was pretty good. It was nice and moist, and the sausage was an excellent addition. The fennel was a little overpowering -- I would use less if I made it again. Overall though, it was a satisfying Thanksgiving side dish!

Including all the recipes from Thanksgiving dinner, I have now made 294 recipes from The Book, which means that I have only 999 left to go! It's exciting to be under a thousand for the first time!

The Christmas lights are starting to go up in my neighborhood! For those of you who live in the area, if you've never seen the Christmas lights in my neighborhood, you should take a walk over here some night. It's amazing! Somerville has a Christmas lights tour bus that goes past all the most decorated houses in the city, and it goes down my street! That's how many lights there are. Do any of you remember that house down the street when I lived on Speridakis? The house with all the lawn ornaments... (or hoopdefrantz if you ask Mark!). My neighborhood now has a half a dozen houses like that around Christmas time! It's amazing. I miss the year-round nature of that lawn ornament house though. It was beyond tacky, but at the same time, it brought me such joy! They came up with such amazing lawn ornaments for every imaginable holiday. Near the Fourth of July it was as if the American flag exploded in their front yard. You actually could not see the grass through all the red, white, and blue. And there was the American flag disco ball! Does anyone else remember that? Mike? Chris? I wish I had taken pictures. I wonder if they still live there...