Battle of the dressings

As Thanksgiving Day drew near our office talk turned to food.
“What’s your favorite Thanksgiving Day food?” was the question posed to staffers.
We soon had a winner — dressing.
Everybody loves dressing.
Then I posed an innocent question — “what kind of dressing, rice or cornbread?”
I’m still shocked by the response — “rice?”
It seems I was in the minority that serves rice dressing, or dirty rice as I call it.
Thanksgiving without both dressings, to me, is weird. I grew up with a hefty helping of dirty rice right alongside the cornbread dressing on my plate. My dad was Cajun and my mom was a Scotch-Irish-Dutch mix and living in Southeast Texas meant dirty rice was staple dish.
All of our family served dirty rice while I was growing up and I serve dirty rice. My kids (who are grown) still eat dirty rice. We even make dirty rice on non-holiday occasions.
Dirty rice has become an easy dish to make, thank God.
When I was growing up there wasn’t any Savoie’s Dirty Rice Mix in the grocery store. My dad began early by cooking a pork roast and a beef roast and other meats I wasn’t aware of at that time. These meats slow cooked, their savory scent wafting through the house and jabbing at my hunger.
My mom would loads of chop onions, bell peppers and celery and place the vegetables in a big pot with chicken or turkey broth and simmer.
My dad would break out the meat grinder and mince out the two roasts and other meats. With a dash here and there of seasonings and some kitchen magic passed down through generations, the ingredients were mixed and we had the best dirty rice I’ve ever tasted.
As a kid I didn’t like onions but I was able to bypass my prejudice against the pungent vegetable and woof down some dirty rice.
I’m glad I don’t have to put as much work in my dirty rice as my parents did but I sure miss the real thing.
So, which is your favorite — cornbread dressing or rice dressing?