Issue link: http://maconmagazine.uberflip.com/i/315999
90 l Macon Magazine october/noveMber 2013 Dressing up for Thanksgiving Thanksgiving has always been my favor- ite holiday. For me it's all about family. We have spent the last 34 Thanksgivings (with two exceptions) at Fripp Island. This is the time we have both sides of our family together. We have the same menu every year, and each member knows exactly what they are to bring. My favorite part of the meal is not the turkey, but the dressing and gravy that goes on top. We have used the same recipe for years, and I wouldn't think of making a change. I believe it is the bacon and bacon drippings that make it so delicious. I always make it ahead and freeze it. I have to double the recipe and sometimes triple it, depending on the number of guests. Another wonderful recipe for dressing came from the late Neva Fickling. In 1986, a small group worked all summer to put together a cookbook, "A Collec- tion of Selected Recipes and Beautiful Homes." This book was to raise money for the preservation of the Sidney Lanier Cottage. Neva and Bill Fickling's country game lodge in Monroe County was the ideal setting for Thanksgiving dinner. The dressing recipe she provided is easy to do since you don't have to make the cornbread from scratch. The sausage and spices that are optional make the dress- ing a little different, and the sauce made using fresh cranberries is a real treat. I tried serving it over vanilla ice cream and it was not only delicious, it was pretty. According to The History Channel website, talk of "stuffing" and "filling" is sacrilegious to Southern cooks, who insist that "dressing" be served— and that this dressing be cornbread-based. The name of the dish first appeared in the 1850s when Victorian sensibilities took offense at the blunter term "stuffing," a term from the 1500s. (It was around that same Victorian time that "dark meat" became a synonym for indelicate chicken legs and thighs.) The term dressing stuck in the South, where the dish made use of a staple of traditional tables: cornbread. Pork was often added, either in bacon form or, more commonly, as salt pork. Since many Southern cooks had plenty of stale biscuits to spare, a biscuit-based dressing became standard in parts of the Deep South. by alaCia rhame h o l i d a Y G u i d e 2 0 1 3