The I Hate to Cook Book (7 page)

1 can chunk tuna

3 hard-boiled eggs, chopped

1 cup cooked rice (about
cup uncooked)

1 onion, chopped

1 tablespoon parsley

½ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons curry powder

2 cups cream sauce
*

2 tablespoons chopped green onion (for garnish)

Mix the tuna with eggs, cooked rice, onion, parsley, and salt. Stir the curry powder into the cream sauce, add it to the tuna mixture, and bake it all in a greased casserole at 325˚ for an hour. Put the chopped green onions on top of it before you serve it, and put a bowl of chutney on the table.

(It is good psychology when serving a casserole dish to use individual casseroles instead of one large one. They look more interesting, and, also, if they’re not entirely eaten, you need have no compunction about throwing the leftovers out; see Leftover Rule,
here
.)

     CLAM WHIFFLE     

3–4 servings

(A whiffle is a soufflé that any fool can make. This is a dandy recipe for those days when you’ve just had your teeth pulled. It has a nice delicate flavor, too, and it doesn’t call for anything you’re not apt to have around, except the clams. You can even skip the green pepper.)

12 soda crackers (the ordinary 2-inch by 2-inch kind)

1 cup milk

¼ cup melted butter

6.5-ounce can minced clams, drained

2 tablespoons chopped onion

1 tablespoon chopped green pepper

¼ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

dash of salt, pepper

2 eggs, beaten together

Soak the crumbled crackers in the milk for a few minutes. Then add everything else, eggs last. Pour it all into a greased casserole, and bake it in a 350˚ oven for forty-five minutes, uncovered.

     SOLE SURVIVOR     

4 servings

(Except for plain fried fish, this is the easiest sole recipe I’ve run into. You can make it with halibut, too.)

4 sole fillets

1 can frozen shrimp soup, thawed (if not available, use 1 can of undiluted shrimp or celery soup and throw in 3 ounces of fresh or canned shrimp, if you feel like it)

Heat the soup while you lay out the fish effectively in a shallow greased baking dish. Bake the fish at 400˚ for twenty minutes. Then reduce the heat to 300˚, pour the soup over the fish, and bake it for another fifteen minutes.

     CELERY FISH STICKS     

4 servings

1 package frozen fish sticks, thawed

1 can condensed cream of celery soup

½ cup milk

1½ tablespoons chopped chives or green onion tops

1 tablespoon lemon juice

3 tablespoons grated Cheddar

paprika

Put the fish sticks (3 to 4 per person) in a shallow buttered baking dish. Thin the celery soup with the milk, and measure out
a cupful. (Save the rest for somebody’s lunch or throw it out.) Add the chives, lemon juice, and cheese to the thinned soup, pour it over the fish sticks, and sprinkle with paprika. Bake it at 425˚ for twenty minutes.

A parenthetical note here. It is understood that when you hate to cook, you buy already-prepared foods as often as you can. You buy frozen things and ready-mix things, as well as pizza from the pizza man and chicken pies from the chicken-pie lady.

But let us amend that statement. Let us say, instead, that you buy these things as often as you dare, for right here you usually run into a problem with the basic male. The average man doesn’t care much for the frozen-food department, nor for the pizza man, nor for the chicken-pie lady. He wants to see you knead that bread and tote that bale, before you go down to the cellar to make the soap. This is known as Woman’s Burden.

But sometimes you can get around it. Say, for instance, that you are serving some good dinner rolls that you bought frozen and then merely put into the oven for a few minutes, as the directions said to. At dinner, you taste them critically. Then you say, “Darn it, I simply can’t make decent rolls, and that’s all there is to it!”

If you are lucky, and have been able to keep him out of the kitchen while you were removing the wrapping, he will probably say, “What’s the matter with you? These taste swell.”

Then you say, in a finicky sort of female voice, “I don’t know—they just don’t seem as
light
as they ought to, or something….” And the more stoutly he affirms that they’re okay, the tighter the box you’ve got him in. Admittedly, this is underhanded, but, then, marriage is sometimes a rough game.

And don’t worry one minute because it’s a little more expensive to buy these things than to make them. Maybe you’re hell
for house cleaning. Or maybe you do your own wallpapering, while that lady down the block, who so virtuously rolls her own noodles, pays vast sums to paper hangers. Maybe you make your own clothes, or sell Christmas cards at home, or maybe you’re just plain cute to have around the house.

As we slog our way through the month, let us not forget about
BEANS
. It is a rare budget that doesn’t benefit from a modest bean dish once in a while.

Most of the time, when you hate to cook, you just add a little extra chopped onion, chili sauce, and a tablespoon of molasses to the can of beans you bought at the grocer’s, and you bake them about thirty minutes at 325˚, and they’re very good, too.

If you feel exceptionally energetic, though, you can also add a can of apple slices and a can of chopped luncheon meat to those other ingredients. This is good makeweight for growing boys, should you be blessed with any.

Also, if you have some kidney beans around, you can make

     HOMEBODY BEANS