A seafood dressing made with the trinity, cornbread and French bread crumbs, shrimp, crabmeat and oysters.

Seafood Cornbread Dressing

There are so many different kinds of dressings out there, the most common ones in the South being one made with cornbread, another made including chicken and the other with only staled bread in the form of sandwich bread, French bread or leftover rolls or biscuits and the addition of herbs.

I've made cornbread dressing both with and without any kind of bread, but I find that I prefer the texture of cornbread dressing when it includes some bread with the cornbread. It's another one of those Southern things that folks tend to argue about though, because there are some who will tell you that only cornbread should be in your cornbread dressing, and that is the only way.

Well. Y'all know what I say about that! 

A cornbread dressing made with yellow squash, sauteed with onion, celery and bell pepper.

Cornbread Squash Dressing

I hear from a reliable source that squash is starting to come in! I didn't plant any this year so if you're trying to get rid of some, stop on by with a bag and I'll gladly take some off your hands!

For some reason, I never see pattypan squash around here, not even at the farmer's market, but yellow squash happens to be my favorite in the summer squash family. I like it far better than zucchini, though I do eat both. I think yellow is a little sweeter and more mellow than zucchini but both make pretty good zoodles.

 

A classic cornbread dressing made with day old cornbread, traditional sauteed vegetables and seasoned with sage.

Cornbread Sage Dressing with Gravy

Wow y'all! I cannot believe Thanksgiving is just days away now. Where does the time go? Before we know it, Christmas will be here, speaking of which... I put my tree up and started decorating this weekend, which is the earliest ever for me. There were a few reasons for starting a little early this year, and none of them have to do with blogging.

First, well... we moved this year and I wanted to make sure my tree would fit in the new house! I bought one of those Bethlehem Lights {affil link} LED instant-power trees (LOVE!) a couple of Christmases ago, and while it fit fine in the family room where I had a cathedral ceiling, I wasn't sure how it would fit in the new house that has standard height ceilings.

It fit, yay!

A cornbread and bread dressing, made with tart apple, hot sausage and pecans.

Sausage Cornbread Dressing with Apple and Pecan

I first made this dressing last Christmas, then again this Thanksgiving and I may even make it again this Christmas, though I'm actually still trying to settle between having a bread or rice dressing, since I'm going with a prime rib roast this year.

Yes, I'm moving away from the traditional turkey and dressing dinner for Christmas this year and going the route of a very expensive hunk of prime rib roast beef with au jus, that I have already warned The Cajun will not be cooked "well done."

While oyster dressing may not be a traditional holiday dressing across the south, here along the Deep South of the Gulf Coast, where the oysters are salty-sweet, it absolutely is a star.

Southern Cornbread and Oyster Dressing (Stuffing)

I realize that oyster dressing is not something that is common at the holidays all over the country, and not even in The South really, but it certainly is down here in The Deep South, especially along the coastal waters.

For Thanksgiving and Christmas, my Mama almost always made two dressings - well, essentially three, really, since she also stuffed the turkey with her herb stuffing.

A traditional southern cornbread dressing, made with crumbled cornbread and toasted crumbled bread.

Traditional Southern Cornbread Dressing

Southerners sure do love their traditional cornbread dressing and some of them will get all "stuffy" over what constitutes dressing and what constitutes stuffing. In my humble opinion, it mostly just depends on where you were born!