Rachael Ray

The Rachael Ray Garbage Bowl

The other night, I cooked (well, chopped) for the first time in the apartment where I’m staying on the Upper East Side. Since I was cooking for just myself, I figured a salad was the right move. There was a cucumber, there was a box of cherry heirloom tomatoes, half of a red onion (sliced thin), a red pepper and a yellow pepper. The dressing had balsamic vinegar, mustard, salt, pepper and olive oil. At the end, I crumbled blue cheese over everything. It was a good salad.

Only, while I was making it, I found it frustrating that the garbage can was a tiny one under the sink. I didn’t want to have to swivel and pull out the can to make the top go up ever time I wanted to throw away an onion peel or red pepper seeds. Which is when I recalled the famous Rachael Ray Garbage Bowl.

Improvised Stuffing

The plan was to roast a chicken the way I normally roast chicken (which is to say, the best way in the world!) on a cold winter’s night in November. And then, flipping through the channels, I stopped on the Food Network (surprise, surprise) and there was Rachael Ray making a stuffing.

Normally, I wouldn’t care to watch Rachael Ray make a stuffing but there she was chopping apples and onions and celery and I thought to myself: “I have apples and onions and celery.” Then she tore up pumpkin muffins and added the vegetable mixture and put it in a pan with some chicken stock and baked it. I thought: “I don’t have pumpkin muffins, but I do have bread and a pan.”

So I decided to improvise some stuffing to go with the chicken.

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