From the Bench

(In keeping with our policy of trying to be of service to our readers, this timely column should be helpful to all you cooks out there planning your Thanksgiving meal. It serves another purpose: While it is a RERUN, as earlier "print media"readers will notice, it saves writing a column this week. What the heck. Don't you ever get lazy? Dave)

ELEMENTARY GOBBLE-DE-GOOK

From the moment that men discovered fire, they have built fires and burned things. If psychologists could look deep within, I suspect they might find latent pyromaniacs in all of us.

Recently I came across a creative teacher’s efforts to channel this prehistoric instinct and perhaps divert it before it got out of hand. It was a cookbook prepared by a group of second graders on how to cook a turkey. As you might expect, it revealed more imagination than any adult could hope to match.

If you are going to cook a turkey, you must first have a turkey. Some of the kids overlooked this in their recipes. Some others bought their turkey at the store. But Coleman was more aggressive. His instructions: "Catch a turkey. Get a knife. Cut the turkey’s head off. Cut off the feathers. Cook it….on the grill until it looks good." Coleman will be a mighty hunter someday.

The cooking of the turkeys involved a wide range of time and temperature. Cooking temperatures ranged from fifty to five hundred degrees, cooking times from eighty seconds to ten hours. Ironically, the five-hundred-degree temperature and the ten hours were included in the same recipe. Chef Paul assures us that you "take it out and the Thanksgiving turkey is done!" Was there ever any doubt?

Abby had a very unique and labor-intensive recipe. It also involved a unique utensil, a "water sucker." The turkey cooks for four hours and you check it every three minutes. Each time that you check the turkey, you get water in the water sucker and put water on the turkey. Oh, and you start off by putting the turkey in a pot containing a quart of water. If you like moist turkey, Abby’s your girl.

Most of the kids who remembered to stuff the turkey used cornbread. Samantha prompted quite a conversation around her dinner table. She added broccoli with cheese, corn, and cream corn to her stuffing.

Probably the most ambitious mini chef was Mary Alice, who cooked eighteen turkeys. But with that many mouths to feed, she was pressed for time. She pre-heated the oven to one hundred and eight degrees, and cooked the birds for twenty minutes. Anyone who made it through Thanksgiving dinner is automatically qualified for the "Survivor" TV series.

But what would Thanksgiving dinner be with turkey and no side dishes? And what housewife has not, at some time, come down to the wire and discovered that she forgot something at the store….say, sweet potatoes? No problem if Katie is assisting you. Just, "Get a potato and some sugar and dye it orange."

The "People’s Choice" award, at least from his fellow classmates, goes to Cameron, who starts out, "For the best turkey you need a lot of candy. You need chocolate." He ends on a popular note. "Then stick your hand in it and bring out a lot of chocolate" I predict a great political career for Cameron.

Brent was either the most honest chef, or he just wanted to get it done and go out to play ball. He listed two ingredients, salt and grease. His main instruction (or confession) read, "I’m not sure but maybe you can put it on the stove for ten minutes."

There were some unusual seasonings among the recipes. If you are bored with the same old recipe you have used for years, try adding cloves, or mustard, or, better still, teriyaki sauce made with Coke and whip cream.

I had one lingering question, and perhaps Rustin can answer it for me. How do you set an oven at fifty degrees? (Maybe he meant centigrade.)

(My thanks to Mrs. Lisa Brewton and "Brewton’s Bunch" of 2000-2001 second graders at Lexington (S.C.) Elementary School for "writing" this column for me.)