Herbed Bread Stuffing (Page 378)

RECIPE #1055

• Date: Thursday, November 26, 2009 -- 4pm
• Location: Westerville, OH
• Kitchen: Dave and Karen's House
• Fellow Chef: Karen H
  
• Dining Companions: Matty, Brad, Deniz, Dave, Pete, Danae, Kenny, Gail, Eddie, Evelyn, Penny, Michael, etc...
• Recipe Rating: B
  

I made this stuffing as part of the Thanksgiving feast at my in-laws' house. I started by cutting some crusty bread into cubes and baking the cubes until they dried out. Then I cooked onion, celery, thyme, sage, and rosemary in butter. I mixed together the dried bread cubes, some chicken stock, water, salt, pepper, and the vegetable mixture. Then I refrigerated the stuffing overnight and the next day Karen stuffed it into the bird. After the turkey came out of the oven we removed the stuffing, put it in a baking pan, and cooked it some more to make sure that the stuffing was cooked through. This stuffing was pretty good. It might have gotten a better grade had I not actually made two stuffings from The Book for Thanksgiving. The other one outshone this one (I will blog about that one next) so I probably wouldn't make this one again. That said, this stuffing wasn't bad at all. It was nicely seasoned and I enjoyed eating it. A lot of liquid went into it -- I am not a huge fan of soggy bread, and this stuffing was a little bit too soggy for me. It had a lot of flavor though, and it certainly felt like traditional Thanksgiving food. If you are looking for a very standard stuffing recipe, this isn't a bad one to try.

The recipe is here.

Today I filed what was hopefully (fingers crossed!) my last academic misconduct report of the semester. This was the sixth one I have filed this term, which is very unfortunate. The student in question, when confronted, immediately confessed and apologized. Although it didn't stop me from filing the report it did make me feel slightly better about the state of humanity. Here's a summary of the cheaters I encountered this semester:

(Note: Because cheating is rampant in this Business Calculus course, I write four versions of every quiz and exam so students don't have the same version as the students sitting near them. The students are aware of this. It is meant to deter cheating rather than to catch cheaters, but students still seem to copy off their neighbors...)

Quiz 1: A student had all the correct work, leading to the correct answer for his version. But then out of nowhere he wrote down and circled the answer to another version. The student confessed when confronted that he had copied off his neighbor.

Midterm Exam: A student had a correct answer to a different version of the exam. The student, very upset, immediately confessed when confronted.

Midterm Exam: A student was witnessed copying during the exam by four proctors. I moved the student to a seat in the front row, but then he just copied off of his new neighbor. When confronted he denied that he was looking at other students' papers. However, his exam confirmed what the proctors witnessed: there was work on his exam which was symbol for symbol identical to his neighbor's, even though his neighbor had a different version of the exam.

Quiz 7: A student had an entire page of answers that were directly off a different version of the quiz. Suspicious that this was reflective of a pattern of behavior, I dug out his Midterm Exam (I keep photocopies of their exams), and indeed he had answers from another version on that paper as well. He initially denied that he had copied anything, but then admitted that although he didn't specifically remember cheating on either the exam or the quiz, it seemed unlikely to be a coincidence that he had so many answers from other versions.

Exam 3: A student had three answers in a row directly off a different version of the exam. When confronted he denied having copied them, claiming instead that he had guessed, and just happened to guess three answers that were all correct for the same other version of the exam.

Quiz 9: A student had two answers off of another version of the quiz. When confronted she immediately confessed that she had looked at the paper of the student sitting next to her.

*sigh*

I went into the semester hoping it would be a semester without academic misconducts. Clearly that was not the case. Well, now I can just hold onto my hope that no one will cheat on the final exam. As part of the penalty for cheating the student gets a zero on whatever he or she cheated on. So getting caught cheating on the final will essentially guarantee that you will fail the course. Unfortunately that is not deterrent enough. I had a student cheat on the final exam the last time I taught this course...