What's Cooking Wednesday: Seven Fishes Feast Entry: Tuna-Potato Chip Casserole

First of all, I want to thank everyone who left such lovely condolences here and via e-mail. I'm truly overwhelmed. Please forgive me for not getting back to each of you individually, but I'm still behind with everything, and probably need to really focus on catching up with family and Christmas and school issues. Again, despite the lack of response from me, the comments were absolutely appreciated in every way.

Thank you.


So D has been gone since Saturday working first with his brothers to help his dad, and now staying on to continue to be with his dad until his brother, J, arrives today, and D will come home (yay!). In the meantime, C and I have been on our own, and it has been downright frigid here in Michigan, and frigid calls for some rib-sticking, gut-warming foods.

I was really hoping to join Maryann of Finding La Dolce Vita and Joe of Italyville in their Seven Fishes Feast, as I've always loved the idea of this tradition, and it may be the one night of the year, more than any other, that I wish I could claim Italian ancestry. I was hoping to create something elegant. I was hoping to create something visually spectacular.

I was hoping to create ... something.

It didn't look like I was going to make it by the December 18th deadline, but then when C called yesterday afternoon between his school and theater commitments I asked him what he wanted for dinner and an old family favorite reared its ugly, but oh-so-delicious (and rib-sticking and gut-warming) head: Tuna-Potato Chip Casserole.

So let's think of this as the "children's dish" for the Seven Fishes Feast. This was a favorite from my childhood, and I dredged up the recipe from the internetz, as my mother was horrified that she'd ever made such a thing and had lost the recipe at some point (probably tore it into shreds and dumped it someone else's garbage).

Anyway, in all its ugly glory, here it is:

Tuna-Potato Chip Casserole



Ingredients

2 cans albacore tuna in water
3/4 cup 1% milk
1 can 98% fat free mushroom soup
3 cups crushed - don't crush them too much - just use your hands to crush them a bit - potato chips (I prefer reduced fat Ruffles - you can NOT used "baked" potato chips in this recipe - they're actually made with dehydrated potatoes rather than real potatoes, and you end up with a gloppy, icky mess that DOES NOT taste good)
1/4 cup 2% sharp shredded cheddar or other reduced fat cheddar

(Needless to say, you can use full fat on all of this and it will be even better, but we really do just fine with the modifications).


Directions:

Preheat oven to 350.

Mix milk with soup. Bring slowly to a boiling point, stirring frequently. Take off burner.

Crush potato chips.

Put 1/3 of potato chips at bottom of casserole dish sprayed with cooking spray.

Layer with half of the tuna. Put another layer of 1/3 of the chips. Put the rest of the tuna. Put the last layer of the chips.

Pour soup mixture over all.

Bake at 350 for 20 minutes. Take casserole out and sprinkle the cheese on top. Bake for 5 more minutes or longer to get the cheese melty and slightly browned.

Number of Servings: 4

There's still time to join the Seven Fishes Feast. To find out what to do, just click here.



Please go to Shan's place for more What's Cooking Wednesday participants.