Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1901 — A CULINARY GENIUS. [ARTICLE]

A CULINARY GENIUS.

CoaSied Dinner In HU Home WTtHe at Business In His Office. The ordinary man is nowhere more out of place than In the kitchen. All rules have their exceptions, however, and a correspondent sends a story of a man who might have led armies perhaps, but was certainly equal to culinary emergencies. In the absence of his wife and family it became necessary, as he thought, for him to cook his own dinner, and In view of the fact that he was a man of business his presence was also needed down town at his office. Now, the same body cannot be in two places at once, and this well known consideration would have settled the question for an average man. He would have either spent his forenoon in the kitchen or gone to his office and lunched out. This, however, was a man to whom physical laws do n§t courtesy oven as custom to great kings. The case stood thus: He was to have a boiled dinner and would have it done to a turn, piping hot and ready to serve at his home coming. The meat, tiirnips and beets, therefore, which require a longer time, he put ou before leaving the house. The potatoes and cabbage, needing less time for cooking, were put on the cover of tbe pot. Then he dropped a string through a hole in the edge of the cover, ran it through a loop suspended from the ceiling and tlience down to the sink. In the sink hole he firmly stuck a candle, to which, two inches below the top, he tied the string. Last of all he lighted the caudle and went to his business. In two hours, or about half an hour before he was to return, when it was time for the vegetables on (he cover to go to their appointed place, the slowly descending flame burned the string, which released the otherwise unsupported edge of the cover, which dropped its burden into tbe pot and fell back where it belonged. When the genius reached home, his dinner was ready.—Youth’s Companion.