Lately, I've been a kick where I want to make casseroles. King Ranch casseroles, tuna fish casseroles, anything that I can just throw into a dish and then throw into the oven sounds good to me. Unfortunately, however, the love of my life is much less interested in these pursuits than I am, and so nary a casserole has been seen in my kitchen.
Since I've agreed with him that the craving for casseroles doesn't really override the fact that they are a terrible summertime food (I mean, it's 90 degrees outside with 3,454% humidity right now), I've been focusing on more fresh flavors and things that don't make you sweat while you eat them in this weather.
Until last week.
I decided to make myself a tuna casserole for lunch on a whim. Side note: for those wondering about the title of this blog, it comes from what Roland - aka one of the most famous Stephen King characters ever created, of the Dark Tower series fame - calls "tuna fish", as he can't pronounce the words correctly.
Ironically, I've never made a tuna casserole before. Now, I've used tuna helper to whip up something that I suppose would be considered a casserole, but I haven't done that since I was a 2nd lieutenant living on my own in my first apartment. I wanted to do something from scratch. Unfortunately, it seems that every recipe I saw was exactly the same. After reading a number of reviews that recommended I use the "Campbell's soup recipe", I decided to find it and go for it. I Googled the recipe and came up with the following:
The ingredient list had me scowling.
1 can 98% fat free cream of mushroom soup
1/2 cup milk
1 cup cooked peas
2 T pimientos (optional)
2 cans tuna
2 cups medium egg noodles, cooked
2 T dried bread crumbs
1 T margarine, melted
Mix together in casserole dish. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Remove, mix together breadcrumbs and butter and drizzle over top, bake 5 more minutes.
Being incredibly grossed out by some of this, I decided to make a few modifications. I had heard that potato chips crumbled on top would be better than bread crumbs, so I decided to put the little side of kettle cooked chips I got at Panera Bread to use. I use whole grain egg noodles, so I cooked those up, and canned peas instead of frozen.
For your benefit, there are no pictures of what this recipe ended up looking like. It looked, smelled, and tasted like what I imagine cat vomit to resemble, although I have never owned a cat and have been fortunate to never witness a cat vomiting, myself.
What is ironic is that if I had gone my way, I would have chopped up some onions and caramelized em a tiny bit, added a dash of garlic salt and some pepper, and maybe used whole fat milk to add some creaminess. I also would have used cream of celery soup - or even cream of chicken - rather than the cream of mushroom, which made the entire concoction, when mixed with the peas, a sickly gray-green color reminiscent of brains.
But no - I stuck to the recipe and followed the directions exactly, and ended up with pure glop, mostly out of laziness and a desire to see if the recipe would live up to the internet hype. I left it sitting out for John to see when he got home so he could appreciate that I didn't actually make it for a meal he'd end up having to consume.
There's only one moral to this story: if you're going to make a tuna fish casserole, be careful what you wish for.
Next up - citrus chipotle chicken kabobs on the grill. Finally, something delicious ;)
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