A stuffing story

We had 19 people at our house this Thanksgiving.  NINETEEN!  Two of Brian's sisters came into town with their families, and it was awesome.  We all had a great time.I LOVE to cook, and Thanksgiving is usually a fun showcase of the delicious recipes I make.  In the weeks before our guests' arrival, I began finding and gathering all the recipes I would need.  I will admit, it was a bit daunting and stressful to cook for so many people.  But I pressed forward anyway, confident in my abilities.Unfortunately, my great plans hit a snag.Stuffing.Where was my recipe for the stuffing?  I couldn't find it anywhere.A little backstory...I grew up eating StoveTop stuffing, and it was fantastic.  I thought it was marvelous.  Brian liked it, too.  But none of my kids would touch it.  They all hated it.  So I went on a little search to find one that we would all enjoy.  And Thanksgiving 2017, I found it!  We ALL loved it.  It was a winner.So where was it?  Hadn't I printed it out last year??  I was starting to panic.  I went to my favorite recipe sources, scouring their websites for my stuffing.  Not only was I not finding it, nothing was sounding familiar at all.  HELP!I brought my kids in and asked them.  I showed them different recipes, hoping someone would remember which stuffing we had made.  We looked at one that used sourdough bread.  Landon was SURE this was the one.  I was unsure."Mom, this is the one.  I remember the sourdough bread, for sure."I DID vaguely remember cutting up sourdough bread.  But it had other ingredients like marinated artichoke hearts, and those weren't ringing any bells.  Time was running out, and I had to get the grocery shopping done.  I decided to go with the sourdough bread stuffing.  I felt uneasy about it, to say the least.The week of Thanksgiving arrived and our guests did, too.  Wednesday was busy with food preparation, including the stuffing.  As I was chopping vegetables, I knew this was the wrong stuffing.  I prayed it would be good anyway.  Although it smelled delicious...it was soggy.  Soggy and wrong.  Ugh.Thanksgiving Day came.  I put my two pans of stuffing in the oven and hoped for a Christmas miracle. Could the oven save my soggy stuffing?  I doubted it.The appointed time had arrived, and we enjoyed a feast.  It was so, so good...all except that stupid stuffing. And I'm not the only one to think so. How do I know?  No one said anything, of course.  But as the leftover food was consumed over the next few meals, the stuffing remained UNTOUCHED.So embarrassing.I kept the pan of it in the fridge til Monday, and then I threw it in the trash, along with my pride.  I may have shed an angry tear.  I know sometimes food doesn't turn out, but a Thanksgiving fail was hard to bear.It was also hard for me to get over.  I have been brooding about the bad stuffing all week, still searching through recipe books and websites, and Pinterest.  I had to find it.And then, on Thursday, I FOUND IT! There it was, sitting in a recipe book I swear I had looked through multiple times.  Landon was right, it did use sourdough bread.  But the similarities ended there.  At that moment, I knew I needed a do-over.Last night, I did it.  I made the RIGHT stuffing.  It was the perfect side to our roasted green beans and turkey breast.  Everyone confirmed that I had found the lost, most beloved stuffing of 2017.Hallelujah.p.s. This is a picture of the right stuffing.  I will let you imagine what the poo-stuffing looked like.  It wasn't pretty.