MY CASSEROLE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 79, 28 December 1918, Page 8

MY CASSEROLE

BY A TEMPOIUKY BACHELOR. Before my wife went away she presented mo with a sort of earthenware jar with a lid and handle. "This," she said, "is a casserole. You will have to do some cooking, for'it will ruin you to get all your meals at restaurants, and the 'charlady' is helpless if you ask her to do anything more than boil potatoes. But with this you can cook all sorts of things and have lots oi fun." At first I did not quite realise where the fun came in, but I am beginning to iindersduid. A casserole is n rawinaling beast. 1 imagine that it has limitations. There must be something that it cannot do, but up to the present I have nut discovered what that something is.

Speaking broadly, it appears to me that you can put anything'into i\ casserole, stick it in the oven for an hour or two, and have a most excellent meal delivered to you. 1 started off with a tin of bully beei. some carrots, and a couple of onions. They did not seem to want anything much done io them, so 1 left them to make friends with each other in their own fashion and went oft about my business. The result was one of the most admirable dishes I have ever had. i do not know what it would be called. It was a fort of hash, I suppose, but I know what it tasted like. The. next day 1' discovered a tin of soup and a lot more vegetables. There were some instructions on the tin, but they did not seem to matter. I simply emptied it into the casserole, with the remains of the beef affair and all the vegetables and turned on the gas in the oven once more. 1 do not pretend to understand why it is, but vegetables seem to taste so much better when they are cooked in company like thai. There are days when I do not bother about getting anything fresh in the way of meal, but simply "11 up the- jar with vegetables and set them io conk, and I have paid away large quantities of perfectly good money for worse meals than those. Vnd so far as I can see there* is no waste about it. The casserole eeems to tako "any old thing" and turn it into Rood tasting food. Bones and bits of bacon ..rind and things of that kind as well as pieces of stale bread go into it with really thrilling results. When my "jfe comes back I am going to givo her s dinner that will surprise hor, but it will only have one. course. Bui I' shall have to do something to ll\p ™s meter before she rcturns.-"Daily .ilail."