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...and I saw the smoked oyster recipe from gourmet today, but I'm looking for something with fresh oysters...

Saute a large onion until it's clear in about half a stick of butter and put it over, oh, 2 loaves of plain ol' store bread that have been dried out and broken up. Crumble up some dried sage, say a loose tablespoonful of the dried leaves, and crumble it over the top. I sometimes add some chopped sauteed mushrooms to the bread mixture. About a teaspoon of thyme is also helpful at this time, but not mandatory. Drain 8-16 oz. of oysters and add the broth to the bread mixture. (My small-town Midwestern family always used canned oysters, but now I like fresh.) I cut the oysters in half with kitchen scissors before I add them. (You may add more if you like, of course.) Add four to six eggs, raw, just breaking them over the top of the mixture. If your broth has been salted, you don't need to add any salt just now, but maybe some black pepper?

Have on hand a generous quantity of turkey broth or canned chicken broth that's steaming hot. Begin ladling it over the bread mixture, stirring the bread constantly. The question of how much broth is very subjective. My dressing is very much like a bread pudding, with lots of liquid, as I was raised to believe that dry dressing was the mark of a slovenly (or penurious) cook. That bread will soak up a LOT of broth. Keep tossing and brothing until it's as moist as you like. Taste it, unless you can't eat raw eggs. (In that case, find someone who can.) More salt? More sage? Sage strength varies from batch to batch, but ti's easy to get too much.

I cook mine in the bird and shoved under the breast skin as far back as I can make a pocket. This will still leave you enough for a 1 1/2 quart casserole of dressing to be cooked after the bird comes out of the oven.

The recipe is now close to a century old, and you can tell it's pretty much never been written down. We have never figured out how oysters ever got into a stuffing that goes back to a valley in rural eastern Missouri, although they were within a day's horseback ride of the Mississippi River and an originally-French settlement there. I do love it.

It's funny - I always said I did the dressing/stuffing just like my mom. But recipes evolve. My broth got stronger over the years, first of all. Then I added a second can of oysters. When I married Mr. Meatloaf (13 years next week!), he took one look at the canned oysters and rebelled. Okay. And then I had a bunch of mushroom trimmings in the freezer that I impulsively threw in the processor and dumped in the skillet after the onions came out of it. Presto: duxelles. And the pinch of thyme is mine, too. Once I could eat a quart of the stuff. Now it's so rich I can't do half that! (Enough butter for the onions and mushrooms will take care of richness, if there's no cream around; at our house, there's a constant weight problem.)