Favourite “junk” recipes?

Cafe Society
21

Edible Tuna Casserole (serves 2)

1 can/pouch tuna
1 can tomatoes
6oz pasta (I like wholewheat penne)
cheese - let’s face it, you have a handful of grated cheese somewhere, or you’re in the wrong thread

Oven. 350°F.

Open the can of tomatoes. You can either drain them in a sieve or put them in a pan and reduce.

Cook the pasta. Go for half what what the packet says

Drain pasta.

Mix pasta, tuna and tomatoes into a casserole dish

Heap on the cheese.

Cook for 15-20 minutes in the oven.

Serve and eat.
If you do it right, 30 minutes, happy wife, happy life :slight_smile:

22

I’ll definitely try the deep dish pan when I’m making for “normal” people. Usually this is my go-to dish when my son has his friends over for a marathon gaming weekend - two to three pans. Three or four 16-17 year-old boys don’t eat like normal folks! :eek: I’ve also been known to make entire vats of chili mac (another wonderfully trashy dish) for the guys, or 3 18" x 26" pizzas for a single meal (plus dessert.) Three pans of brownies is the norm when Pete, DJ, and Luis are invited. Plus one box of cereal for each, if everyone’s spending the night. Seriously, it’s like being invaded by a horde of (extremely nerdy) locusts!

23

They sold these at the high school snack bar windows. The regionalism for them is ‘pepper belly’. I went years without having one. Now we seem to have them every couple of months.

Beef stroganoff. No, not the proper kind. The kind you make with Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, sour cream, Worcestershire sauce, chopped onions, sliced mushrooms, and served over egg noodles. (Actually, we had it over white rice when I was growing up.)

Ground beef tacos or burritos. Ground beef, a packet of taco seasoning. It’s quicker, cheaper, and easier than buying and cooking a roast for machaca. For tacos, put some cooked meat into a corn tortilla and fry it in oil. For burritos, put the meat in a warm flour tortilla. For either, add shredded lettuce, diced tomato, shredded cheese, sour cream, guacamole (if available), and Tapatio.

Sincronizadas. 14-inch flour tortilla with refried beans, ham, and shredded cheese, covered with another flour tortilla, baked until it’s melty and delicious, cut up like a pizza, topped with sour cream and guacamole, and garnished with diced tomatoes and shredded cheese.

Porcupine meatballs. A pound of ground beef mixed with a box of Rice-A-Roni and an egg, browned in a frying pan, gravy made of the seasoning packet and water, covered and simmered for 15 minutes. Make extra brown gravy from a packet.

Mac’n’cheese with ground beef and onions.

The SO likes my cooking, but she has to be ‘in the mood’ for many things I like to cook. And she won’t eat the same thing for days. (Weird, eh? :confused: ) She also doesn’t care for lamb or duck. So much for cassoulet, roast leg of lamb (and shepherd’s pie for the next few days), jambalaya, roasted duck, and so on. (Thankfully, she’ll eat leftover turkey and meatloaf.) She also objects to too much of the ‘junk’ foods I mentioned. She’ll as for the easy tacos and burritos. She likes the occasional sincronizada. She loves my stroganoff. She gets cravings for the pepper bellies. But again, she has to be ‘in the mood’. And she complains about how ‘heavy’ and unhealthy they are. (No way she’d go for the mac’n’cheese, and pretty much won’t eat the porcupine meatballs.) So we don’t eat these things as often as I would if I were on my own. We tend to eat steaks, home-made (usually) pizza, breakfasts, escargots four or five times a year, sandwiches, or we fend for ourselves. I’m picking up a couple of live dungeness crabs Saturday. I think it’s about time for some salmon, too. (I like Cajun, she prefers dill with lemon-dill Béchamel sauce.)

24

5- or 6- pack of Swanson’s “Gravy with Salisbury Steaks” (which tells you something about the proportions, here). Loaf of sliced sourdough, smallest diameter you can find.

Nuke Swanson’s glop. Lightly toast 10 or 12 slices of bread (broiler pan works better than toaster). Build sandwiches with as much gravy as you can get into each one.

Can be scaled down for petite eaters.

Haven’t had this in years - there is no sourdough up here, and the factory food is much sweeter and blander than in the west. Tried it once with Eye-talian bread and added it to the list of things I can’t get any more (sourdough, boysenberry jam, hard salami, pretty much any food that isn’t sugared…)

25

I don’t have anything to add, but I do have a request. Anyone have a recipe for Ham Salad? I’ve been jonesing a ham salad sammich, and in southern Maryland the stuff can’t be found.

26

You should try SPAM salad! It was dad’s favourite. OK, don’t turn your nose up and say ‘Eeewwwww!’ It’s just SPAM, which is pretty much canned ham.

Run a can of SPAM through the meat grinder. Mix with Miracle Whip (yes, Miracle Whip – it’s important) and sweet pickle relish. Refrigerate for a couple of hours. Make your sandwich with soft white bread like Wonder Bread. Dad had lots of friends who were disgusted by the mere thought of a SPAM salad sandwich. After trying it, they always asked for more.

Miracle Whip is important because it’s sweet. It counteracts the saltiness of the SPAM, where mayonnaise won’t. Also SPAM is fatty enough. Mayonnaise is too much fat. I only buy white bread when there’s no wheat bread at the store, and I haven’t even seen a loaf of Wonder Bread in years. Sara Lee works.