My children are adults now. They’re smart, good-looking and friendly. They take after their mother. What they did inherit from me is an affinity for ethnic foods cultivated by years of exposure to my never-ending culinary experiments, the successes as well as the failures – and there were a lot of both.
The collateral damage to all this tomcookery was my children’s aversion to the traditional American kid-fare delights that I scarfed down during Saturday episodes of Magilla Gorilla and the Jetsons; no PB&J or Pop-Tarts for them. But my wife and I discovered that we could get the kids to eat just about anything if we assigned an exotic sounding name to it or made up a magic-filled story behind its origins. Our kids would never eat tuna casserole, but call it Fishyssoise (pronounced like the cold potato soup Vichyssoise) and tell them that it was the favorite dish of the king and queen of France and they’d clear their plates and ask for seconds.
If you have little ones and you’re not sure they’re going to eat something you’ve made, try our trick and see what happens.
What You’ll Need
3 – 5 ounce cans of chunk light tuna packed in water
1 – 16 ounce package of some kind of noodles *
1 – 10 ounce package of frozen peas
3 cats
2 cans of condensed cream of celery soup
1 stalk of celery – chopped
1 small onion – chopped
1/2 cup of Tortilla chips – crushed
Shredded cheddar cheese
What to Do
First I’m going to let my kitchen manager, Lefty, instruct you on the proper handling of the 3 cans of tuna…
……………………………………………………………. “Cats love tuna water see.. so whenever you have tuna you gotta do the right ding. Ya gotta drain dat tuna water into bowls..as many bowls as you have cats. Drain it real goodlike and make it even so dat dem cats don’t get into no fights or nothin. And don’t look at dem whiles theys drinkin it cause cats don’t like dat see. And if any of dem cats don’t finish their tuna water don’t take it away or nothin cause cats have the right to leave and come back whenever dey choose, so if you take it away then dey have da right to crap in your shoe see.”
“I hope you learnt somethin here.”
Lefty
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Allllrighty then… so now boil your noodles until they are just a little shy of crunchy. Drain them into a colander and rinse under cold water to stop the cooking.
Heat your over to 425 F.
Hiss a little non-stick cooking spray into a roasting pan (we use a 13 x 9 x 2). Dump the cooked noodles into the roasting pan. Scoop the drained tuna out of the cans and spread it all nice and even over top of the noodles. Add the onions, celery, frozen peas, and 1/2 of the shredded cheese and mix it all together. Now add the 2 cans of soup and mix it around one more time making sure that all the noodles get coated with the soup. Sprinkle the crushed tortilla chips evenly over the top, then the remaining shredded cheese over top of that.
Bake in the oven – middle rack – for about 15 to 20 minutes until the top just starts to brown. Serve hot.
Serves at least 6. My Cost approx. $ 8.75 total – about $ 1.45 per serving.
*Traditional tuna casserole calls for egg noodles, but I scored a 1 pound box of Ronzoni corkscrew macaroni (Cavatappi) on sale for 88 cents and it works great. GMN