Tuna Noodle Casserole

We’ve been married for a while now. The curious and fun part of marriage is the blending of our histories and traditions.

Funny thing, we each grew up with tuna casserole as a comfort food. However, they were quite different. Her’s was essentially tuna and noodles, ours was tuna and potato chips.

One day we decided to mix them up and we hit on a winner. The salty, crunchy taste from my childhood, but much more filling due to the pasta from hers.

This isn’t a fancy meal, but it is yummy and better yet, super easy for a weekday meal.

Ingredients:
12 ounces canned tuna
10 ounces cream of mushroom soup
1/4 cup milk
1/3 lb of cooked shell (or other firm) pasta
1 cup frozen peas
2 cups crushed potato chips

Directions:
1. Pre-heat oven to 350F. Mix tuna, mushroom soup, and milk in a 2 quart oven safe dish.

2. Mix in cooked pasta and peas.

3. Cover with potato chips.

4. Bake for 30-40 minutes until chips are brown and casserole is bubbly.
 

5. Allow to cool and serve.

 

Soft Pretzels

The wife’s been wanting soft pretzels and hasn’t been able to find a good one out. Those are the words I love…a challenge.

I tend to try things the easy way to get the hang of it and then experiment from there. This is try number 1, easy pretzels.

After searching on-line for some recipes, I noticed the dough was very simple. So to try this out I thought packaged pizza dough would work just fine. I was right.

The real secret to pretzels and bagels is to boil the dough in baking soda water before baking. This creates the chewy texture.

I tried these in a convection oven at 475F, next time I will try at 400F. The outside got too done while the middle wasn’t quite cooked through. That being said, they were pretty darn good. We threw them back in the oven at 350F for a little bit to finish them up.

Ingredients:
1 can of pizza dough
2 tbsp baking soda
4 cups of water
1 tbsp coarse salt

Yields 6 pretzels

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 400F. Roll out the dough and cut into 1 inch slices, lengthwise.
 

2. Shape dough into rolls and then make a pretzel shape (keep practicing).

3. Mix soda and water and bring to a boil.

4. Place 2 pretzels at a time in the water. Boil for 1 minute 10 seconds, flip and boil for another 1 minute 10 seconds.

5. Remove pretzels from water and allow to drain. The pretzels will be very spongy at this point. Continue with remaining pretzels.

6.  Arrange pretzels on a greased cookie sheet or Silpat. Coat generously with salt.
 

7. Place in oven and cook for 12-14 minutes until golden brown.

8. Enjoy your fresh pretzels.