Casseroles.......

Casseroles seem to be a little bit a 'thing of the past', but I believe they should make a come-back, particularly with our grocery bills rising by the minute and how many people they can feed.   Casseroles can be fattening if you add sour cream or mushroom soup or lots of pastas or rices, but they can be very healthy, too.   Either way, they're very often full of lower-cost foods than we might make otherwise.  Instead of pork chops or lamb chops, ground meats are usually in casseroles and they're usually less costly.  Sometimes, you can throw a bag of frozen vegetables into a casserole and, if you're not watching your carbs, they're often full of rice or noodles, and they're not expensive, either.    (I happen to love tuna noodle casserole but never make it because it's not exactly weight or health conscious!)

Do you have a favorite casserole you'd like to share with us?   You don't necessarily have to post the recipe, but give us an idea of what's included.    Was your casserole a family recipe, or is it one you just found and loved?  Let us know!  Thanks!

Talking about tuna noodle casserole reminds me of a dish I came up with out of sheer desperation while living in Paris.  We hadn't shopped for a while and I was running out of food and we decided to stay in for dinner that night so I found some spaghetti, a large can of tune and lemons and roughly did this:

Z's Pasta and Tuna:
Sauteed a thinly sliced onion on olive oil, added a little garlic if you've got it (Or garlic powder, not garlic salt, never), threw in the tuna(oil or water included) and broke it up into the olive oil, warmed that all up, squeezed lemon juice into it, added enough white wine to make it juicier (add a bit more olive oil if the sauce seems to need a little thickening to stick well enough to the pasta), and then threw cooked spaghetti noodles into that tuna 'sauce'.  I grind a good amount of black pepper on top as tuna and black pepper are such a good combination and it adds a real depth of flavor.  If I have parsley, I finely chop some for the top, and sometimes I throw some grated Parmesan on top. We loved it and I made it for Mr. Z several times even if I did have my refrigerator full of other foods to choose from!  I later took to adding chopped dill, which he adored, or anything else I thought might work.  It's delicious, cheap, and has a lot of things you already have in your house, right?  ENJOY!

z