With five daughters, I’ve put in my share of time at the fundraising-BBQ- cookout, or in Aussie-speak, sausage sizzle.

Last night was the Christmas concert for Sorenne’s pre-school, which was somewhat surreal the first time – outdoors, everyone in shorts and flip-flops or dressed up fancy-like. For a sub-tropical climate in summer, they go a little nuts about the Christmas thing, with surfin’ Santa’s and shrimp on the barbie by the beach.

I proudly wore my Kansas State hockey shirt (there is no K-State hockey) and waved around my Comark PDT 300 tip-sensitive digital thermometer – which wasn’t necessary because the staff had precooked the sausages. But as the hundreds of parents and kids poured in (dozens?) me and John Hodgman-lookalike, Clayton, resorted to cooking raw sausage, and the thermometer became a necessary aide.

No children were harmed in this sausage sizzle.

 In Oct. 2004, I gave a keynote talk at the Food Standards Australia New Zealand food safety conference in the Gold Coast, Australia.

Before the talk, I did a live bit for one of the morning talk shows – like Good Morning America, but it was Good Morning Australia. Washing shopping carts was of particular interest.

The interview was done remotely, with me in the kitchen of a somewhat swanky hotel and casino where the meeting was being held. Before we got started, I chatted with the chef about some random food safety stuff. I asked if he served sprouts and he replied he’d worked in southeast Asia, new the risks with raw, and always gave them a quick saute or blanch.

I also noticed he had a tip-sensitive digital thermometer in the front pocket of his chef’s coat, and I asked if he used it, and he said all the time.

I asked if I could borrow the thermometer to use as a prop during the interview, and the media person accompanying me said something like, you can’t talk about thermometers, we can’t even get people to refrigerate their food; the fridge is for the beer.

Seven years later, and the consumer food safety types in Australia have started a push to use thermometers for food safety.

The Food Safety Information Council recommends meat thermometers be used to decrease the risk of food poisoning, but only 23% of Australian households own a meat thermometer and only a third of those with a one have used it in the last month, according to Council commissioned Newspoll research released today.

Food Safety Information Council Chair, Dr Michael Eyles said today, “A meat thermometer is a vital piece of kitchen equipment for both food safety and food quality reasons making it surprising that less than a quarter of households have one, and even more surprising that only about a third of those with one say they have used it in the past month.”

Following the lead of Elizabeth Weise of USA Today who last month wrote of the virtues of thermometers as gifts, Eyles said, “A meat thermometer makes a great Christmas present. … It is not only a small price to pay for the safety of your family and friends but is a minor cost to ensure food is consistently cooked to perfection.”

The national Newspoll study of more than 1200 respondents, 18 years and over found:

• Nearly 1 in 4 (23%) households claim to have a meat thermometer at home. This varies across the country, ranging from 27% in Victoria, to 17% in Queensland.

• Higher income households are significantly more likely to have a meat thermometer. 28% of households with an income of $80,000+ claim to have a meat thermometer, compared to just 17% of households with an income of less than $30,000.

• Among those who have a meat thermometer, only 1 in 3 (35%) claim to have used it in the last month, with half of these (18%) claiming to have used it in the last week.

Self-reported surveys like this one still suck – meaning people know the socially acceptable or desirable answer and lie. So the number of people actually using thermometers is overinflated.

But look at Amy. From learning how to temp a chicken breast in 2005, she’s now using our Comark PDT 300 on bread and cookies to ensure optimum quality (those cookies reached 190-200 F and were excellent). With moving around, different ovens, the humidity, and always trying different recipes, there is significant variability in actual oven temps, moisture levels and heating efficiency. So stick it in.

In her somewhat annual Thanksgiving message to barfblog.com, Michéle Samarya-Timm of the Somerset County Department of Health, NJ, gets stuffed.

At Thanksgiving, if conversation isn’t about the bird, it’s about the stuffing: in the bird, or outside the bird? I teach food safety to a variety of folks, so my stance on this stays consistent…outside and 165 F.

Attendees at my food safety class last week brought up a refreshingly different question….does it matter what the stuffing is made of?

I know the barfblog guys are particular about stuffing; Doug wrote about it last Thanksgiving. His refrigerator potpourri technique sounds tasty…a gourmet mélange of basic ingredients. Call it barfblog’s Best Thanksgiving Stuffing, if you will. But this recipe has competition.

Cookbooks and websites are chock-full of the best-ever stuffing recipes with subtle twists on traditional ingredients. Using bread? Options are endless: Cornbread, multi-grain whole-wheat, sourdough, rye, bagels, and the ever-popular squishy white Wonder Bread.

Not a bread person? How about a rice stuffing? You can choose from white, wild, saffron, risotto, or last night’s leftover steamed. It’s easy to see how basic substitutions have expanded the variations for grandma’s recipe.

The advent of processed foods managed to usher in some more kitschy offerings, that surprisingly have cult followings: Corn Flakes stuffing (featured this morning on NPR), Ritz Cracker stuffing, or even White Castle hamburger stuffing.

I began to wonder about alternate approaches to this traditional side dish. I’ve heard of stuffing made with items such as sausage, lobster, clams, chestnuts, pine nuts, zucchini, or bacon.

These can all be personalized marks of a creative cook. In addition, I recall many times in my own kitchen when I needed to get inventive for lack of an essential ingredient. So I might be able to understand why there is a recipe for popcorn stuffing. What surprised me were the more unique renditions of this holiday classic that could make a Thanksgiving one to remember:

Didn’t have time for breakfast this morning? No problem – you can make stuffing from oatmeal, grits, grape nuts or captain crunch.

Don’t like the taste of turkey? Pair it with stuffing made college-style with pizza…or Italian style with prosciutto, salami and pepperoni …or man-style with steak and bacon.

For a multi-cultural twist, try tortilla chip stuffing, lasagna stuffing, or a mofongo mix – a Puerto Rican specialty of fried green plantains mashed up with bacon, sofrito and olive oil.

You could consider the epicurean dish turducken (a chicken stuffed into a duck, which itself is stuffed into a turkey) as the ultimate in stuffing options…or is it?

I pondered…is there anything edible that can’t be cooked as stuffing?

I tried searching for the strangest options, and uncovered stuffing recipes containing alligator, applesauce, chocolate (now that may be onto something), peanut butter, Twinkies and donuts.

Devil Dogs, cookies, pop tarts, matzos, malted milk balls -- you can pretty much put anything in; if it’s edible it can be made into stuffing.

The key is not the ingredients so much as the food safety. You can make stuffing from homemade cornbread, marshmallow peeps, bologna or rutabaga, so long as you cook it thoroughly and check it with a probe thermometer. 165 F kills a whole host of common pathogens. Kill the pathogens, not your guests.

Stuffing isn’t evil; cooking it incorrectly is.

Thankful for all those who keep our families, our food supply, and our country safe.

 Tips for a food safe Thanksgiving dinner are popping up, so Chapman and I, always eager to jump on a bandwagon, came up with our own.

1. Never wash the Thanksgiving turkey. Research from the U.K. and elsewhere shows that washing turkey or chicken is an ideal way to spread dangerous bacteria throughout the kitchen or food preparation area. Washing under running water can spray surface contamination up to three feet away.

2. Never place a whole turkey over your head. While it may be a popular attempt at comedy in movies and television shows like “Mr. Bean” or “Friends,” do not inspect the internal cavity of the turkey by placing it over your head. This is potentially the most contaminated part of the turkey.

3. Make sure to use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer to ensure the turkey has reached 165 F. Color is an inadequate indicator of safety so always use a thermometer to test the turkey before serving.

4. Cool leftover turkey quickly. Refrigerate leftover turkey within two hours of taking it out of the oven. Some spore-forming bacteria will grow and form toxins if kept at room temperature for too long. Turkey should be cooled to 41 F quickly and this is best accomplished by placing sliced leftover turkey in reseal-able bags of one quart or smaller size. Bags should be laid flat in the refrigerator to allow cool air to circulate.

5. Do not pass babies with leaky diapers around the holiday table. This can lead to all kinds of food contamination, and does not end well for anyone at the table.

A table of holiday-meal related outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/turkey-related-outbreaks.