"Build-a-mountain"

This is one of my family classics that I recently dug out of the recesses of my memory and plopped onto our dinner plates. It seems like a really gross combination of ingredients until you try it. Trust me. Note, however, that it is essential to include as many of the ingredients as possible to achieve the desired taste chemistry. The way my family set up the "buffet" was to put bowls of each ingredient in a row on the counter. Each one had a piece of paper with a rhyme to go along, explaining which part of the "mountain" the topping was to represent. Example: coconut is the snow, chow-mein noodles are...trees? okay it made sense when I was a kid, but the most important part is that you end up with a delicious mountain of food on your plate. My sister and I would be in charge of putting easy things in bowls and writing the directions (in crayon), complete with illustrations and arrows so as to keep any diners (our grandparents) from wandering the wrong way around the buffet and ending up with an inverted mountain. This is an essential recipe for this site, since it includes both cream of mushroom AND cream of chicken...in their purest form!

INGREDIENTS (recipe serves 8-ish)
2 cups uncooked long-grain rice
1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
some milk (about a cup?)
chow mein noodles
3 tomatoes, sliced
1 cup chopped celery
(1/2 cup chopped green bell pepperl)
(1/2 cup chopped green onions)
1 (20 ounce) can pineapple chunks, drained
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
(1/2 cup slivered almonds)
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1 tbsp diced pimentos, drained

DIRECTIONS

Make rice. It might be prudent to have all your toppings chopped or set out beforehand if you don't have a family of helpers to do it for you.

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, combine chicken and mushroom soup concentrates with pimentos. Mix well and heat a little, then add enough milk to not make it totally disgusting that you're eating condensed soup. Basically you want it to have the consistency of pudding, not soup. Stir until heated through.

On each plate layer cooked rice, sauce, tomato, (other optional vegetables), pineapple, celery, cheese, chow mein noodles, and coconut. Every bite tastes different!

(The picture comes from a site with a recipe that is inferior to mine, as it has the pimentos on top instead of doing their proper job flavoring the sauce)

tuna casserole: the remix

they say when life gives you lemons make lemonade. well sometimes life gives you bags of frozen broccoli, and shortages of frozen peas. that said, here is an ingredients list for the tuna casserole that i made last night:

about half a box elbow macaroni OR small shells
one can cream of mushroom soup (CofM)
one-two cans of tuna fish
one cup milk (or less, depending on the amount of macaroni)
one 8 oz block of sharp cheddar cheese (minimum)
one-two cups frozen broccoli
black pepper
red pepper flakes, if you want to take it there
crushed chips

i'm pretty sure you are all capable of figuring out how to combine these ingredients appropriately. however, despite the obvious simplicity of this recipe, i still manage, somehow, to screw something up almost every time. except last night. last night my casserole was nearly perfect. in fact it probably could have been in some sort of museum. so here is a second list of things that might account for my uncharacteristic success:

leave the noodles slightly undercooked

use a small casserole dish, calling for fewer noodles, less milk, and slightly less cheese, resulting in a much higher CofM ratio

don't grate the cheese, cut it into slices, and add it last, just before you pour everything into the casserole, so that it doesn't completely melt until you put it in the oven

if you have the luxury of a colander, heat the CofM with a little of the milk in the bottom of your pot before returning the drained noodles. i'm pretty sure this can't possibly serve any purpose other than making you feel like you are making a more complicated recipe that requires a roux or something, but i like imagining that kind of thing so i recommend this anyway

bake at 350 for about 40 minutes