My Quest for Tolerable Stuffing (or Dressing)

For Thanksgiving this year, I was in charge of making pumpkin pie and stuffing. The pumpkin pie I actually volunteered to do, but I was a little surprised when my cousin told me I had to make stuffing since it's one of the four or five foods I don't like. She hates stuffing too, and so do half the people who were at our Thanksgiving, yet for some reason we still have to have it.

I decided to try to make stuffing that I would actually like. I had heard Scott Hutcheson on K-LOVE talking about how dressing is better than stuffing. I honestly didn't even know there was a difference. He uses cornbread in his dressing, which I thought sounded good. I wanted to put apples and pecans in my dressing as something extra and was excited when I found a recipe for Apple Pecan Cornbread Dressing. I modified the recipe a little since my mom doesn't like onion and Nathan doesn't like celery or ginger.

This is how I made my dressing:

• 1 (9x9 inch) pan cornbread, cooled and crumbled (I made a box of Jiffy corn muffin mix)
• 1 (6 oz.) box Stove Top turkey stuffing mix
• 1 golden delicious apple, peeled and chopped
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans
• 2 cups apple juice
• 3 eggs, beaten

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In a large bowl, combine the cornbread and stuffing mix. Mix in the chopped apple, chopped pecans, apple juice, and beaten eggs. Spoon dressing into prepared casserole dish.
3. Bake for 30 minutes in the preheated oven, or until heated through, and lightly browned on top. 

The verdict? The stuffing lovers loved it, and the stuffing haters wouldn't try it but took my word for it that it was good. Nathan ate a couple bites on Friday and said it was "different." His parents seemed to like it though. I personally really liked it. The only change I would make would be adding more pecans or using pecan halves for extra crunch since I didn't put celery in it. The description in the original recipe of "savory, yet sweet" was very accurate. It was far from frugal, but I was willing to pay extra to make it good.

Do you prefer stuffing, dressing, or neither?