MEAL: Chef-Cooked, but She Won't Tell

Fresh collard greens, imported from South Carolina. Dressing, made with fresh-baked cornbread. Mashed sweet potatoes or candied yams. Everything but the bird, which the client would handle.

Then there are the desserts. Tarts (not pies, because tarts make for a more elegant presentation) in a half-dozen flavors, a dozen kinds of cakes and cheesecakes. She'll have made dozens of them by today, all from scratch.

For the past week, Benton, owner of Desserts, Etc. in Suitland, has risen at 4 a.m., worked out ("It's the only way I'll have the energy to get everything done."), put in eight hours at the office and then gone to clients' homes to cook.

Each day since Saturday, she has prepared their Thanksgiving feasts -- the Suggs', the Browns', the Taylors' and the Perkins' -- two, sometimes three in a day. She cooks, packages, labels them with reheating instructions, stores them in the freezer and cleans up. She gives pointers for gussying up their "home-cooked" meal with garnishes for authenticity. "A lot of people like that because they don't cook and want people to think they did," she said.

The United States Personal Chef Association estimates there are more than 5,000 personal chef businesses in the United States and Canada, which will generate $300 million in revenue this year.

Benton, an accountant for the National Republican Club of Capitol Hill by day, figures she's two years from giving up that job to focus on the chef-catering work. An average meal costs $15 to $20 a person, but on holidays it runs $25 to $85, depending on entrees and add-ons.

This morning, she'll cook for her family: cornbread dressing with giblet gravy, sauteed yellow squash, collard greens, mashed sweet potatoes, potato salad, yeast rolls, broccoli cornbread, lemon bars, butter pecan tarts, Kentucky butter cake, homemade ice cream, coconut cake, yellow cake with chocolate icing and maybe a caramel cake.

"Just the basic stuff," she said. "Then someone else will clean up."

-- Anita Huslin