SC - Passage East III - Part 1

[CorwynWdwd@aol.com]

Ras wrote:
 
> In a message dated 11/22/00 8:45:13 AM Eastern Standard Time, nanna at idunn.is 
> writes: 
> 
> 
>       It is conceivable that Benchley may have perpetrated an early 
>       >communications hoax 
 
Actually, that was me. That wrote the above, I mean. 
  
> I find this highly unlikely. The dinners held by this group were generally 
> known as being exceptionable if occasionally a little extreme. 
> 
> Ras

Hmmm. That is a point to be considered. I can't explain it any better
than to say, read the recipe/article carefully, read a bunch of other
stuff by Benchley, and you'll have to admit it's hard to tell, from the
article itself, whether he's serious or not, and the fact that people
say the recipe turns out a marvellous turkey dish is almost of secondary
relevance. Benchley could _still_ have been joking, and perhaps unaware
of whether the recipe might actually work.

Another example of this sort of thing might be Russell Baker's account
of his legendary dinner cooked and eaten on the same night that Craig
Claiborne and Pierre Franey had their $10,000 dinner for two somewhere
or other, courtesy of Public Television's first big fund-raising
auction, which would have been, I think, in 1975. Baker sets the scene
by describing the Claiborne-Franey event, then says he came home on that
historic evening to find a note from his wife taped to the fridge,
saying, "Am eating out with Dora and Imogene. Make dinner for yourself."
He then proceeds to describe this glorious gastronomic adventure of a
meal, cooked and eaten while standing, based upon aging leftovers in the
fridge and a prodigious knowledge of Depression-era hobo cookery. He
describes beans fried with bacon grease, Fried Bologna a la Nutley,
Nouveau Jersey, a cheese course consisting of a single piece of Kraft
processed "cheese food" rubbed in the bologna juice from the frying pan,
all washed down with an impudent little 1975 Gilbey's gin, etc. 

Over all, it is perhaps the funniest piece of food writing in the
English-language corpus (followed by a dinner scene in one of Gregory
McDonald's Fletch books). However, I still am not sure if it ever
actually happened, in spite of the fact that it easily _could_ have
happened. Baker sure describes burning that bologna with conviction, though.
   
Adamantius

P.S.: Anyone looking for this article can check the Reader's Guide to
Periodical Literature for the NY Times edition it appeared in (as I say,
it would have been in 1975 or 76, I suppose), and it can also be found
in Baker's collection _So This Is Depravity_.
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com