I can't even remember what dish this was

Well, it's been so long since we cooked the dish this entry is about, that I can't even remember which dish it was, or which book it came from!  Maybe if I look at the photos?

WTF?

Hmmm.  Better start from the beginning.  It's another instalment of 'Everyday Food'.  This time, it was the much-needed 'Timesaving Tricks' edition:

The dish: sausage and bean casserole.  The concept behind the dish is one of my favourite dishes: cassoulet.  Of course it's one of my favourite dishes: it's a stew that cooks for hours and contains confit of duck (fatty duck braised in duck fat, refrigerated in duck fat, then sautéed in duck fat).  But what about this timesaving American version?

The key to this dish is that you can make it ahead of time and then freeze it - hence why it belongs in the 'timesaving' issue.  I'm going to try to recreate the genesis of the dish from the pictures.  First you chop some onion and cut up a couple of kielbasa:

Then your dish is ready!

OK, these might be out of order.  Ah yes, this photo looks like an interim stage, probably the onions cooking with the sausage: 

Cooking oil on the right, in case there's not enough fat.

Then you cook something in another pan (tomatoes?):

Then you add that to the sausage and onion mix:

It's looking very liquidy.  That must have been stock above, not oil.  And to my trained eye, there is red wine in there too.  Anyway, then you add beans, I'm guessing, although there's no picture to prove that actually happened.  And, I'm also guessing, you top it with breadcrumbs, and put it in the oven, and then take it out:

I do remember that it tasted very good; perhaps a little too smoky: I think we thought that next time we would use half smoked sausage and half unsmoked.

We did freeze another whole casserole dish of it and ate that later (a couple of weeks later, I mean, not later that same evening), and yes, that did save a lot of time.  Or rather, since we had to heat it in the dish from frozen, it took a long time, but time during which we could play scrabble and drink wine, rather than having to tend the stove.

Next up, 'Christmas appetizers'.  Don't think for a moment that we are going to skip it just because it is not Christmas!  That would not be in the spirit of the recipe book challenge.  Instead, we're just going to wait 9 months before doing anything out of it!  Seriously, I'm sure that the book's inappropriateness for this time of year is part of the explanation why our project has abruptly slowed down.  We had a great opportunity to make something out of it today, to take to Lydia's first birthday party (birthday, Christmas, what's the difference?), but the party was cancelled because of the bug that's hitting Princeton babies and their parents.  In fact, I am writing this as both Katherine and Evelyn are taking an afternoon nap; one of them recovering, and the other one still suffering badly.  At this rate, Evelyn will be able to help us when we get to the end of the books.  She is nearly standing on her own now, and so it won't be long before she is cooking us dinner!