Urgent Request: Please could you help me? A relative who is a vegetarian is coming to pay us a visit and the only dish I seem to be able to think of is macaroni cheese. Do please suggest something else.

Mrs Noel Chanter replies: How about a vegetable pie? Collect as many different kinds of vegetables as you can: one or two carrots, parsnips and onions, two tomatoes, half a small cauliflower, some tinned peas etc.

Cut them into neat pieces and stew the hard vegetables for 15 minutes in two tablespoonfuls of salad oil and ½ a gill of water.

Also, soak a dessertspoonful of tapioca in a ½ gill of water. Now mix all the vegetables together in a pie dish, add one or two sliced hard-boiled eggs, the soaked tapioca and a little marmite. Cover with a lid of your best pastry and bake until brown and crisp.

[From the Watford Observer of April 2, 1937]

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