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Food For Thought: 'Hey Mom! I Want a Butterbloat All-Wiener Turkey!'

Mary Dunaway
Butterbloat fan and wildlife artist Tahmina Dunaway.

Today's Thanksgiving guest lists often include vegetarians, allergy sufferers, political statement-makers, sundry food phobics, and the just plain hard to please.  So, since you can't please everyone, why not serve the TG main course sure to scandalize them all? 

It's the Bar X Jumbo All-Wiener Butterbloat Turkey. And this week's Food for Thought brings you an exclusive interview with its creator.

"So tender you can cut it with a glance," says proud Bar X President Bill Whistlecod.  Nancy Leson was curious about basting the BXJAWB.  Though she's partial to using a butter-soaked cheesecloth on her so-called "real" turkey, Bill recommends a simple mixture of mustard, ketchup, and onion. 

And since the all-wiener turkey is hollow you can fill it with the stuffing of your choice.  "I like to use canned chili," says Whistlecod.  And the stroke of culinary genius that led this simple country boy from Othello, Wash. to his present powerful position atop the pinnacle of alternative food?

                                                The Butterbloat Provenance

"I hooked up with a spam carver named Boog Stickler," says Bill,  "And he and I started to make a line of all-wiener produce."  They had to abandon that project when all-wiener lettuce and carrots proved too labor intensive.  But then the bulb lit up.  What about an all-wiener turkey?

                                Will the Butterbloat make me sleepy?

I asked Bill about his product's claim to be tryptophan enhanced.  Speaking of the amino acid said to make turkey eaters drowsy, Whistlecod elaborated.  "Well, we say tryptophan enhanced but it's actually — uh,   Xanax.  Of course we use the generic Alprazolam. But the results are the same.  You're goin' down."

Children are the future of the Butterbloat, so I thought a kid's drawing would be the perfect photo for this post. I asked mother and 88-5 KNKX Executive Director of Development Mary Dunaway if she happened to know any who were good with crayons. She emailed "I just put in what is now officially the strangest calendar note of my life: 'Saturday: Have the girls draw a picture of a turkey made of wieners.' "

"No more turkey but I'd like another helping of that bread he ate."  – anonymous child quoted in "Joy of Cooking"

Dick Stein joined KNKX in January 1992. He retired in 2020 after three decades on air. During his storied radio career, he hosted the morning jazz show, co-hosted and produced "Food for Thought" with Nancy Leson and wrote and directed the Jimmy Jazzoid live radio musical comedies and 100 episodes of Jazz Kitchen.