Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, February 21, 1994                   TAG: 9402190090
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THANKS FOR BOOKS, BUT I'M NO COOK

I regret I have to turn them down.

I screw up popcorn in a microwave that has an automatic popcorn popper button. I just hope Orville Redenbacher never finds out.

I decline this spectacular offer because (a) I'm afraid to cook and (b) I don't want to start all of this activity the Southern Living people predict if I buy this book.

(I also think they sent this offer to the wrong inmate of our house, but what's done is done.)

I have no wish, for example, to have telephones ringing with the news of my culinary triumphs.

I don't want mothers talking about me in the carpool line, and, in the name of everything we hold dear, I don't want to see "the beauty shop gang beside themselves."

There is no doubt that these recipes get your attention.

There is the asparagus with mustard cream sauce - which you would be stealing from the Jesse Lee Memorial United Methodist Church of Ridgefield, Conn.

I don't want to be disrespectful, but I'm not an asparagus person, and mustard cream sauce seems, well, a bit racy to mei

I say this with sincere apologies to the ladies of the church and to any of the gentlemen who had a hand in preparing this dish. The execution of

these recipes will make you famous, the Southern Living folks say, and you don't have to tell anybody they aren't yours.

If, for example, you make a butternut squash souffle for the company's covered-dish supper and this knocks out the office bombshell, you can tell her it's just a little something you whipped up.

I assume you might ask her up to your place to see your recipes. That would be up to you, of course.

The local office bombshell should know, however, that as a happily married man, I have no intention of knocking her out with a butternut squash souffle.

And the chances of coming up to see my recipes are very remote - one of the reasons for this being the fact that I don't have any recipes.

Also, I wouldn't know a butternut squash souffle if I met one of the City Market.

I know the gang at the beauty shop could use a little excitement after all this bad weather, but I'm too old to start cooking now.

I also apologize to the mothers in the carpool.

Maybe some day I'll make them a corned-beef sandwich - if I can get the meat out of the can in one piece.