Tuna Noodle!

I promise that this entire blog will not be dedicated to me being a contrary bitch about 70s-era casseroles. As I've said, I will also share interesting twists and comforting oldies-but-goodies.

One of the members of the Casserole Pantheon is Tuna Noodle Casserole. Everyone knows about it, and it's either well-beloved (in an ironic and/or nostalgic sense) or reviled (in a "My mother couldn't cook and we were forced to choke this shit down" sense).

I'd never really thought about Tuna Noodle until Curtis and I got together. It started when he was making this thing called "tuna salad."

My mother made the most amazing tuna salad in the entire world. I will never be able to reproduce it for the following reason: my mother weighed 122 pounds the day before I was born. And that was the most she ever weighed. EVER. I cannot make the tuna salad she made. She preferred tuna packed in oil. Real mayo. She cut up super-sweet midget pickles (and complained in the latter days that "they're just not sweet enough") and then added sugar too.

And I would inhale that tuna salad. On shitty white bread. Because I can be a food snot, but I can also eat food that hard-core food snots turn down. Because they're stupid.

I've tried making my mother's tuna salad recipe, and I've gotten close, but never quite achieved it. Part of it was that she was just GOOD at it. Part of it was that I couldn't in good conscience make exactly what she made. I'd make it, then stare at it sadly, and think about how I didn't weigh 122 pounds the day before I gave birth. I've never given birth, and I don't weigh 122 pounds.

But I digress.

Curtis said to me one day that he had made "tuna salad."

I was wholly unprepared for Curtis' version of "tuna salad."

He boiled macaroni, then drained it (but didn't rinse it in cold water), added a can of peas, an unspecified quantity of mayo, an entire chopped onion, and a can of tuna.

I did not like Lukewarm Tuna Casserole, as I came to call it. It had to be either Tuna Noodle, or Tuna Salad. There was nothing in between.

So I set about making Tuna Noodle.

I went through about 4 incarnations before finally finding The Recipe for Tuna Noodle. And, actually, I didn't find it. I cobbled it together from a bunch of recipes.

Here it is.

A bag and a half of large egg noodles
1 can cream of mushroom soup (98% fat free)
1 can cream of celery soup (98% fat free)
3 5-oz cans tuna (drained)
2 cans of peas (drained)
2 cups of sharp cheddar
1 large onion, chopped (preferably with a Vidalia Chop Wizard, the best gift I ever received, other than a car)
Salt & pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 350.

Boil the egg noodles per their boiling instructions. Drain.

Put the egg noodles back in the pot in which they were boiled. Add the (undiluted) soups, the tuna, the peas, the cheese, the onion, and as much salt and pepper as you'd like to the pot. Mix until combined. Dump into a casserole dish and spread around. Cook at 350 for about 20 - 25 minutes (depends on how you like your Tuna Noodle).

Eat it for 2 meals a day, every day, for the next week. Unless

A) You hate it

B) You have a large family or a lot of guests

C) You eat it all at one sitting (and in that case, JESUS CHRIST, throttle back a bit, eh?).