The Best Thing That Happened This Week

Forget the Birds. Hell, forget the bird, in all its golden glistening glory. The sine qua non was what lay inside it, in place of giblets and gizzards and heart. You can dress it up by calling it “dressing.” You can haute it out by anointing it “filling.” But stuffing is what it is as well as what it does, cramming the crannies of Meleagris gallopavo and then our crannies, smushing down amidst the mashed potatoes and gravy and cranberries and pie until we fall back on our sofas in exhausted repletion, done in not by lofty cuisine but by a homely patchwork of white bread and sage and onion, transubstantiated from it into us as we announce: “I’m stuffed!”