Damsel in dis Dress wrote:
> >On 2005-02-02, Melba's Jammin' > wrote:
> >
> >> Does that sound familiar to anybody?
>
> A follow-up to my previous post for Authentic Tater Tot Hotdish.
Jill was
> right about using one can of cream of mushroom and one can of cream
of
> celery soup. The baking time is 45-60 minutes, as I recall.
>

Several months ago, my friend, who has 2 little kids and a husband,
fell and hurt herself, requiring stitches in a delicate place. It made
walking or standing difficult until the stitches came out. She was
lucky, it was a puncture wound that missed her femural artery by an
inch, and several other internal organs by mere inches. Anyway,
happened to call just after she got back from ER, hubby told me what
had happened...next day I decided to run over there with a tuna
casserole. (my point...see there was one)

I ran out on my lunch hour and got 2 cans of tuna. I figured for 2 cans
of tuna, 2 cans of soup plus 1 lb of wide noodles. I thought I had the
soup in the house...turned out, I had only 1 cream of mushroom, but I
had a can of cream of celery, too. "Shrug...how different could it
be?" thinks Sheryl.

I mixed the soups with some milk, the noodles, the drained tuna (Mandy
had enough tuna-water for a feast!), some peas and carrots (knowing her
kids will eat peas and carrots, I was safe in adding these), parmesan
cheese, poured it all into a big casserole dish....topped with buttered
bread crumbs, and baked it for 40 minutes, and brought it over to them.


Well! Her husband was never a big fan of tuna casserole (though he
would eat it if there was no other option), but HE LOVED MY TUNA
CASSEROLE! I don't even eat tuna, though I make this with leftover
chicken. The kids loved it too. My friend thinks its the combo of
cream of mushroom and cream of celery that made the difference, b/c
unbeknownst to me, she makes it pretty much the same way I did....even
to the point of adding the parmesan cheese. Same brand of tuna, even.
Only real difference was the cream of celery vs. 2 cans of cream of
mushroom.

Maybe the celery adds a bit of "zip" you don't get from mushrooms???
I dunno...but she now makes this once a month for her family and uses
both kinds of soup and they really like it. When she uses only
mushroom....they don't enjoy it as much.