Chicken with Wild & Brown Rice Stuffing

Stuffing

1 cup cooked (with salt ) wild rice/brown rice mixture,
1/4 cup pine nuts
1/4 cup dried cranberries ("craisins")
1/4 cup onion
1/4 cup celery
1/4 cup pork sausage
(frozen breakfast sausage;
e.g. Jimmy Dean brand)
black pepper
marjoram
butter

(It's good to very gently brown the pine nuts in a dry frying pan,
to give better flavor, but this is optional.)
Chop the dried cranberries, onions, and celery.
Then, in a frying pan, saute:
onion and celery and pork sausage (1/4 cup each? more veg than sausage),
then add the cooked rices,
then add chopped dried cranberries and toasted pine nuts.
Season to taste with black pepper, marjoram,
and/or anything you think will be good.
Add butter if it looks or tastes too dry.
Adjust tastes until you think it tastes really good. Refrigerate.

Bird

Get a nice big chicken. (I got one once that was almost 6 pounds.)

Then, a good couple of hours before you want to serve:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Wash & dry the chicken thoroughly, place it on your nice roasting rack, with pan under.
HEAT the stuffing in microwave until very hot, stuff the bird with hot dressing.
Sew or tie up opening to hold stuffing in.
Bake for approx 1&1/2 hour, basting with melted 1/2 stick butter as soon as it starts to look a little brown.
Keep checking when you baste a few times. You can reduce heat to 350 if it looks like it's too fast.
Get it good and brown. With all that basting, it won't be dry, and it's better for it to be falling apart.

I also pour 1/3 stick of melted butter over it once it starts looking a little brown, and I baste it a few times. It is easy to baste if you use a back, so you can just lift the rack, set it on another cookie sheet, and pour the juice over the chicken from the first cookie sheet.

Vegetarian Version

Omit the chicken.

- Irene