The I Hate to Cook Book (14 page)

Children who raise Cain about carrots will sometimes eat them if you boil them along with potatoes and mash the two together. Not always, but sometimes.

     VERY EDIBLE STRING BEANS     

6 servings

(Many string bean recipes, too, call for expensive ingredients like fresh mushrooms and toasted almonds, and even so, you can still taste the string beans. Simmering them with a ham bone works as well as anything, but remember, they didn’t give that ham bone away. This recipe calls for no exotic extras, and it tastes good.)

2 packages frozen string beans, cooked and drained (or 2 pounds fresh, ditto)

5 tablespoons butter

salt and pepper

1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley

1 clove garlic, minced

juice of half a lemon

Sauté the cooked beans in the butter, along with the salt, pepper, parsley, and garlic, for seven to ten minutes. Just before you
serve them, sprinkle the lemon juice on. (Note: These beans are the exception that proves the Leftover Rule,
here
. If there are any beans left over, known as has-beans, you had better keep them, because they are good in a green salad.)

     BEN’S BEANS     

All he does is this: He sautés a little can or two of mushroom pieces in a little butter, adds cooked green beans, salt, and pepper. Then, over low heat, he stirs in enough sour cream to make a sauce, heats it through, and serves it up.

If you are roasting meat in a 300˚ oven and want a vegetable to bake along with it, you can make

     SIMPLE BEANS     

3–4 servings

Cook and drain a package of frozen string beans and add

1 tablespoon minced onion

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup condensed mushroom soup thinned a bit with whole milk

2 tablespoons chopped pimentos if you have them

Put this in a casserole dish and bake it, uncovered, for an hour in that 300˚ oven. Longer won’t hurt. (Canned string beans work fine in this recipe, too.)

     BEETNIKS     

Should you happen to fish the final sweet pickle out of the juice in a pickle jar and, at the same instant, notice a can of shoestring or baby beets on the pantry shelf (admittedly an unlikely chain of events), you can put the beets into the pickle juice, put the lid back on, and the next morning they will be pickled.

     SOUR CREAM CABBAGE     

5–6 servings

(You wouldn’t cook this for company unless your kitchen is two blocks from the living room, but it’s easy and it tastes good.)

1 firm green cabbage

1 egg, well beaten

2 tablespoons sugar

½ teaspoon nutmeg

salt and pepper

1 cup sour cream

Shred the cabbage fine, and throw the core away. Cook it in as little water as possible till it’s tender—five to ten minutes. Drain it, then add the other ingredients, mixed together, and put it on a low burner to heat through.

     THE SOLUTION TO CANNED PEAS