Cornbread Dressing was a new food for me when I came to the South in the 1980's.  My favorite meal of the year has always been Thanksgiving for the turkey, dressing, green beans, cranberry salad and pumpkin pie. The last two listed were made by my Grandma Jester and nobody makes it any better, unless they are using her recipe.  The recipe and a fortitude to follow it makes all the difference in the world, come tasting time.  So I asked my man how he makes cornbread dressing.  All the dressing I had ever had with Thanksgiving faded away when I tasted cornbread dressing. First you'll need the recipe for cornbread in an earlier blog post:

Thankfully you won't be using all of the two pans of cornbread to make the dressing.  There will be just enough for dinner the night you make the cornbread. You can actually make the cornbread the night before you make the cornbread dressing. So make two pans of cornbread then read on....

Ingredients: onion, celery, butter, cream of chicken/celery/or mushroom soup (only 1 can, choose), 1 egg, and 1 tsp. fresh sage (really, get some fresh sage for this cornbread). 2 pans of cornbread, 9"x13" pan

Saute the 2 stalks of celery cut into small pieces and cook in the pan with butter until they soften a bit.  Then add in the diced onions and cook until the onions become transparent. Remove from the heat.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a bowl crumble up one and a half pans of cornbread (you get half of one pan for dinner.  So be sure you have your vegetables on low simmer while you are making the cornbread dressing mixture).  Add in the cream of soup of your choice, 1 egg (already beaten), 1 tsp. sage, a bit of salt and pepper.  Mix it but not too much.  It should be a liquid like texture.

Cook until brown, 30-45 min.

It's relatively simple to make.  It tastes fancy.  It's so delicious.