Champagne Taste on a Beer Budget

It's about time that we sausage and mashed potatoes types smartened up and began to enjoy the good life that is just a word or a gesture away. We may be on a survival diet, thanks to the economy, but it doesn't have to look like it.

Watch the TV ads for the on-the-air cooking programs. They make hamburger or beans 'n' franks look like culinary triumphs. So, how do they do it?

Well, partly by the language they use. They don't fry, they saute. They never dish up, instead, they serve. Moreover they serve attractively, stir delicately, toss gently. Their celery is always crisp, tomatoes succulent, green beans snappy, carrots tiny, eggs country fresh and their meringues are snowy.

Just think how differently you would feel about those sausages and mashed potatoes, now, if you said you were serving crisp golden-brown sausages accompanied by fluffy whipped potatoes crowned with a pat of country-fresh butter.

Of course, you can go a step further and add "tone" with a smattering of French. Using just a little, as you would a spice, simply puts the whole thing on a different level. So, if you're back to the sausages and mashed potatoes for the third night, try telling your brave little group that you're having "les saucisses avec les pommes de terre en puree." Now watch their faces light up!

You may have applied a new vocabulary, but you're only to first base. Take another look at the ads and this time watch the model instead of the food. Notice the graceful way she moves, the languid motions of the hands as they oh-so-gently transfer the food from serving dish to plate, the plate to its place on the table. Graceful, that's what it is!

Well, as the saying goes, don't knock it until you've tried it. Find time between doing the laundry and cleaning the bathroom. Lock the doors and practice moving languidly from the counter to the table. Move from the stove to the table, counting to ten between steps. Place a dish on the table-gently-pretend it's explosive! Now slowly, lift an imaginary spoonful of something and deposit it lovingly on the plate. Watch your wrist action!

While you're practicing all this, you may as well look the part. You can't carry this off wearing your usual attire of sweatpants, t-shirt and old, worn out tennis shoes. No, what you need here is something classy to match the new movement you have just taught yourself. Velvet would be perfect.

Last, but not least, strive for elegance in the table decoration. You're trying to create a total dining experience, so try for a setting that carries out the theme of the meal. For sausages and mashed potatoes, how about your best bowl, filled with lovely earth-colored potatoes, placed on a mat of artificial turf and crowned with a small porcelain pig?

High style in cooking and in serving all adds up to gourmet eating. Your mundane fare should taste mundane no longer. And while you're (delicately) eating, you must engage in lively conversation. Preferably about the stock market, the place to go this vacation, the latest doings in the lives of the celebrities in the neighborhood. Chat about anything, that is except the economy. That doesn't matter to you anymore!