Potato Stuffing or Filling (Gluten Free)

Last Monday, our son and daughter-in-law came to dinner. It's kind of funny. Every couple of weeks or so, our son calls up, sort of to check in on the old folks, and announces that they will come to dinner. They are extremely considerate. When I was in and out of the hospital for my hip replacement operation, they brought dinner no less than three times, on top of a busy work schedule. But anyway, they were here, and I used the opportunity to check off two of the dwindling number of recipes in the New England section of the cookbook.
The last time I was at Safeway, they had an amazing, buy one, get one free offer involving those giant roasting chickens that Purdue used to call oven stuffer roasters. I had actually forgotten about them because Bob has been doing most of the cooking lately. For some reason, I took something down to the freezer and found it stuffed with two huge chickens. I had been toying with the idea of corned beef and cabbage for dinner, since I love corned beef and cabbage, but seeing the chickens brought me back to my senses.
I remembered the Potato Stuffing and decided to go with that, although I did not use it to stuff the chicken. Cooking was kind of a rush, because I had tutoring before and did not get home until 5:45. Bob had put the chicken in while I was explaining the mysteries of decimals to my tutee. I had to clean up the kitchen and start cooking. He had also considerately boiled three potatoes for the mashed potatoes.
I was able to make the stuffing gluten free by using gluten free bread as the bread cubes. Everyone,  my daughter-in-law particularly, spoke highly of the result. She said she wanted to dive right in to it. This is a woman who really likes potatoes in virtually any form. However, I found it kind of blah, meaning lacking in flavor.  I added garlic powder to pep things up, but if I was going to make it again, I would add a chopped onion sautéed in butter.
Now that I think about it, using it to stuff the chicken would definitely add flavoring. But I would still add a chopped onion. This is an easy recipe to make, so if you have some left over mashed potatoes, or a few boiled potatoes, it would be a way to quickly dress up roast chicken.

Potato Stuffing or Filling

2 cups mashed potatoes
2 eggs lightly beaten
2 tablespoons butter
2 cups tiny white bread cubes
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
1/2 teaspoon thyme
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 cup milk

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Beat the potatoes with the eggs. Heat the butter in a skillet and brown the bread cubes in it. Sprinkle with the marjoram, thyme, salt and pepper and stir into potato mixture.
3. Add the milk and mix well. Turn into a greased baking dish and bake forty-five minutes. Or use to stuff a five pound chicken.  Makes four servings.