Thanksgiving and a simple but non-negotiable recipe for my mother’s bread stuffing

Linebackers, Quarterbacks and being at mum's elbows taking orders.

This guest post is written by

Kate Cone Brancaccio

of The Adventures of Katie O'Folly

Read about her take on everything, but mostly about her adventures in food, beverages, travel and what it means to be a widow, mother, grandmother, sibling and writer

Image by Kate Cone.

Try to conjure a memory on demand. I dare you. They tend to arrive at the three-a.m. witching hour, crawling under your comforter, and kicking your shin. They are rarely the good memories. Au contraire. But my holiday memories are mostly as warm and fuzzy as a Hallmark movie, if you have five kids and a hectic household. I guess that’s normal.

The one I am going to write about here will suffice, because it’s a memory of cooking something I make decades later, and treasure because it’s one of the very few heirlooms I have to pass down, a recipe. My mother made her Thanksgiving stuffing this way, the same way her mother did and perhaps even as her grandmother did. All of them, and many other cooks, used a beloved ingredient created and still made in Massachusetts, where I started out. 

It was 1968 and in our little New England town, the leaves have turned color and fallen, lying along the roadside, rust-colored, waiting to be swept up by the town. Temperatures have become cold enough some days to provide some dustings of snow. Right now, car horns are honking, celebrating our high school football team’s victory over arch-rival Acton-Boxborough. Thanksgiving morning football is huge in Massachusetts, starting at 10 and ending by noon, time to run home and baste the bird and pull together the sides. The pies were made the day before. Dinner rolls will come out of a bag from The Rolling Pin bakery. 

My older brother Brian is quarterback on the team and is probably in the locker room getting praise from Coach McKenna. His teammates were once told when Brian got tackled in practice, “Linebackers are a dime a dozen! Quarterbacks are worth their weight in gold — never tackle him again!” Too risky for an injury. 

I’m back from the game, breathless from the chill, with chafed hands from rubbing them to keep warm. There is the joy of cheering our Tigers on with a few hundred other fans, looking at the cute boys I wish were my boyfriend, but would not know what to do with if they were, like the dog chasing the car. My mother is quickly changing the mood by putting me to work ASAP. The whereabouts of my siblings is as usual, NTBF, Nowhere To Be Found, (except Brian) and when they do sway in, there will be little more for them to do. Hint: because I, oldest girl, was deemed early on to be the worker bee for the family. My sister has her own version of this story, but she’s not writing this. And I clearly remember that on this particular Thanksgiving, I was at Mum’s elbow taking orders. 

We are making stuffing. Not dressing, but stuffing 

“Toast the bread, but not too dark.”

“Pull it out of the toaster and throw it in the bowl.” (Yikes! My fingerprints just got burned off!)

“Load the toaster again.”

“Tear up the bread in the bowl into “No! Not that size. Too small! Or “too big!” My hair was red then, but I felt like Goldilocks, ripping until I got the size of the torn bread “just right.” 

Mum was a big woman, 5 feet 10 inches and well, hefty. She worked hard providing for us, along with Dad, and this year, she was a waitress at Domenic’s, a pizza, pasta, ten-page-menu restaurant across the road from where we lived. I watched her get dressed for work once, because for some unknown reason she did this in our dining room. I saw just the finishing touches, but I knew the drill. 

She put on her undergarments, then a girdle with garters, then nylon stockings, fastened to those garters, then a slip, then her black polyester uniform, then she would begin the effort with her feet. Born with hammer toes, she had always had trouble. She put corn pads on each of her ten toes. Some of those would have to be secured by a bandaid. Then she eased her feet into the newly polished white work shoes with gum soles, like nurses used to wear. 

I recall that I felt sorry for Mum, working to earn her tips, which then came mostly as change and not bills, to support us. And I was horrified then, as a teenager, because I didn’t want “that” to happen to me. She was only 48 when she had a massive heart attack, which she survived. It was smoking three packs a day of Pall Mall’s, her doctor said. I’d say stress was also a factor, but they didn’t talk about that back then.

So, there we were, Mum and me, in the kitchen. There is the gratis turkey roasting in the oven (courtesy of Uncle Jim, who was a grocery store manager), and a big pot of potatoes boiling, a can of cranberry sauce waiting to be opened. And I was fast and furious with the torn bread until there was a gigantic bowl of it. I knew better than to ask if I was done. There was no escape. But as I write this, I think, “why was I so resistant?”— I loved to cook, even as a teen. And I love to cook now. What was different? I think it was that I never seemed to please my mother. And that was tough. There was a tension there, mingling in the steam from the potatoes. I didn’t cross her, though I may have groused a bit. 

This changed over the years. We once made Piccalilli relish together, grinding the peppers with an old-fashioned meat grinder and using the stuff we got from the garden that year. I was aware then that it was a new way of her being with me, more as equals. I rubbed my eyes after grinding the hot pepper. She laughed and I laughed, and she told me how to flush out my eyes with cold water. 

Back to 1968, before I burn more bread. But I will take this “sacred pause” to say something about our recent election. November 5, 2024, and my candidate didn’t win. Why? Some finger-pointers say Harris and her team didn’t pay enough attention to voters who are hurting from inflation. I’m one of those, hurt, but not voting on a single issue. I recall my mother dressing for work, perhaps wishing she had married better, perhaps wishing she didn’t have to work at all…. perhaps wishing she’d had more control over her body and had birth control at her disposal. As a Catholic, she wasn’t allowed to use birth control, such as it was back then. She had had five live births, but had one stillborn, and several other miscarriages. Less bodily control, the more mouths to feed, hence we circle back to inflation and the cost of feeding families. 

Yes. The cost of that turkey in 1968 was about $3.02. She was grateful to her brother for giving us one free. Today that price is about $27.00. And that’s if you don’t need a heritage, free-range bird who has a birth certificate. But single-issue elections….not a good idea. 

The stuffing. The bread is torn, in that bowl, and Mum is sautéing chopped onion and celery in a pool of butter, and when the vegetables are soft, she dumps it into the bowl. I’m now watching the pot of water (we never did get a teakettle), waiting for it to boil. It starts to bubble. Mum grabs the handle and pours some over the bread chunks. And now comes the Bell’s Seasoning. 

William G. Bell is said to have gotten the formula for this iconic seasoning by watching his mother Sophronia cook. He had established himself in the grocery business in Boston long before inventing the seasoning, so he had a platform and customers. Introduced in 1867, this brand, always a salt and preservative-free mixture, is an “I’ll die on this hill” staple of all New England pantries. What are the ingredients? A sniff from the tiny box reveals a sage-forward blend, with rosemary, oregano, ginger, marjoram, thyme, and pepper, pulverized into a fine powder. 

In it goes, into the bread, which is now transformed into a damp brown glob. A beautiful glob, mind you. I am tasked to put this into the turkey’s cavity, which is gross, but I do it. The turkey is partly cooked now and it goes back in for another hour or so. Mum will decide when it’s done. No instant-read thermometer here. She just will know. 

I slice the cranberry sauce and let it slide to one side in the special pressed glass dish. We put sweet pickles, olives from a can and sticks of celery into another glass plate, all reserved for holiday dinners. A bowl of mixed nuts and a metal cracker round out our appetizers. For us, it makes this day festive. The boys drift in and roll our portable black and white television from the living room to the dining room. All-day football games will not go unwatched here, Thanksgiving be damned. My sister and I protest, but The Boys have spoken. Dad comes in from somewhere, the crevices of my memory can only keep track of so much. The one thing I have prioritized in my memories is this frozen moment when I learned how to make the stuffing. And the happy cacophony around our humble table. 

Bell's Seasoning Stuffing Recipe

Bell’s Seasoning New England Stuffing Recipe (from the box)

Makes enough to stuff 5 pounds of poultry.

1. Sauté 1/3 cup minced onion and ½ cup chopped celery in 4 tbsp. Margarine or butter until golden. 

2. Pour sautéed vegetables and ½ cup water or milk over 8 slices of white bread, cubed (plain or toasted) and toss.

3. Add 1 ½ tsp. Bell’s Seasoning, a dash of pepper, and ¼ tsp. Salt (if desired). Toss until mixed. 

You can tinker with this recipe, as I did many times. When I first had my own Thanksgiving dinners, I tried oyster stuffing, wild rice, whatever the food magazines were flogging in the seventies and eighties. But I eventually returned to this original. Simple and delicious, it is my favorite dish at the holiday table. I make sure now that there is plenty of homemade gravy to pour over it. The gravy is another tale. 

Kate Cone Brancaccio