Just Gotta Bake Recipe

• 1 1/2 pound loaf of crusty bread, cut into 1″ cubes
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 3 tablespoons chicken broth, plus 1 3/4 cups chicken broth
• 1 cup diced celery
• 1 1/4 cup diced onion
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 pound mushrooms, cleaned and thinly sliced ( I used a variety of shitake, crimini and button)
• 2 Granny Smith apples, peeled and cored, 1/2″ dice
• 1 tablespoon fresh parsley
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground pepper
• 1 cup dried cherries (or cranberries)
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans

Directions

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a large baking dish (approximately 13″ x 9″). Cut the bread into 1″ slices, slice off the crust and then cut each slice into 1″ cubes. Place bread cubes in one flat layer, onto a parchment covered cookie sheet (I needed 2) and place into the oven for 10 minutes to dry out the bread. Set aside. 
• In a large sauté pan over medium heat, add the 3 tablespoons of butter and 3 tablespoons of chicken broth. Add the celery, onion and garlic a cook for 2 minutes stirring with a wooden spoon.
• Add the sliced mushrooms and diced apples, and stir with wooden spoon. Sprinkle in the salt and pepper and parsley. Cook for about 10 minutes, or until apples are soft and can be easily pierced with a sharp knife. 
• Place dried bread cubes in a very large bowl. Add in the entire mushroom/apple mixture and toss all the ingredients together. Add the cherries and pecans. Then slowly begin to pour the 1 3/4 cups of chicken broth over this mixture, not adding all of it at once. You don’t want the stuffing to be too mushy, but you want the bread to soak up the chicken broth and soften. 
• Place this mixture into the greased baking dish and bake uncovered for 30-40 minutes, or until the stuffing is heated through. If stuffing browns too quickly on top, tent it with some foil.

Gotta

• a relaxed pronunciation of got to, indicating obligation, compulsion
• a Lighting Company, Empresa de iluminacao e producao sediada no Japao em 2009 por Anderson (Andy) Hinago.
• a panchayat in Hiramandalam mandal, Srikakulam district, Andhra Pradesh, India
• another name for urad dal, a type of split lentil used in Indian cooking

Rusty Blackbird

Behavior

They forage on wet ground or in shallow water, mainly eating insects, small fish and some seeds. Their most common mode of foraging is to vigorously flip leaves and rip at submerged aquatic vegetation. The mast of small-acorn producing oaks, such as Willow Oak, is also important. In some areas, the nuts of planted pecans are heavily used. They very rarely will attack small passerine birds, and have been known to kill species as large as Common Snipe. They feed in flocks during migration and on the wintering grounds, sometimes joining other blackbirds, both often occurring in single species flocks. They more often roost with other blackbirds; some small roosts are in brushy vegetation in old fields and others are in massive mixed flocks—sometimes in the urban areas.

The species nests relatively early for a boreal forest bird. They linger in the boreal zone to complete their molt. Their autumn migration is slow, with birds often remaining in the northern states well into December; spring migration is much more rapid. The largest wintering concentrations are found in the lower Mississippi Valley, with smaller concentrations in the Piedmont and south Atlantic coastal plain.

Fairly quiet in fall migration and most of the winter, both males and females will sing (particularly on warm days) in the late winter and spring. The song consists of gurgling and high-pitched squeaks.

Yellow Bittern

The Yellow Bittern (Ixobrychus sinensis) is a small bittern. It is of Old World origins, breeding in much of the Indian Subcontinent, east to Japan and Indonesia. It is mainly resident, but some northern birds migrate short distances. It has been recorded as a vagrant in Alaska and there is a single record from Britain, from Radipole Lake, Dorset on November 23, 1962 - however, the BOU have always considered this occurrence to be of uncertain provenance and currently it is not accepted onto the official British List.

This is a small species at 38 cm length, with a short neck and longish bill. The male is uniformly dull yellow above and buff below. The head and neck are chestnut, with a black crown.

The female's crown, neck and breast are streaked brown, and the juvenile is like the female but heavily streaked brown below, and mottled with buff above.

Their breeding habitat is reedbeds. They nest on platforms of reeds in shrubs. 4-6 eggs are laid. They can be difficult to see, given their skulking lifestyle and reedbed habitat, but tend to fly fairly frequently, when the striking contrast between the black flight feathers and the otherwise yellowish plumage makes them unmistakable.

Yellow Bitterns feed on insects, fish and amphibians.