Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 121, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 October 1903 — A CULINARY GENIUS. [ARTICLE]

A CULINARY GENIUS.

Cooled pinner In Hl* Heme WMl< nt Buainesa In Hi* Office. The ordinary man is nowhere mors out of place than in the kitchen. All rilles 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 hls forenoon in the kitchen or gone to his office and lunched out This, however, was a man to whom physical laws do not courtesy even 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, turnips and beets, therefore, which require a longer time, he put on before leaving the house. The potatoes and cabbage, needing less time for cooking, were put on the cover of the pot. Then he dropped a string through a hole in the edge of the cover, ran it through a loop suspended from the celling and thence 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 candle 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 the 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 the pot and fell back where it belonged. When the genius reached home, his dinner was ready.—Youth’s Companion.