Some of the advantages of being down here are that fruits and veggies are SUPER cheap. So if all else fails, salad it is! Plus we always have rice in the house. The combinations of rice are endless... fried rice, rice salad, curried rice, turmeric rice, veggies and rice, beans and rice, etc.
Tuna Casserole is one of the dishes that we've made a couple of times during particularly tight months. It's cheap, it's really filling, and it's 1/2 way healthy. Now, most tuna casserole's call for cream of something soup. But the thought of cream of something soup grosses me out, it's not healthy and we'll it's expensive to buy here. So I did lots of digging online to figure out how to get creamy tuna casserole without cream of whatever soup.
Here's what I came up with (adapted from singforyoursupper.com)
500 grams of noodles
2 cups of fresh peas
3 cups of stock (either canned or from bullion)
about 4 oz of butter
all of the veggies you want (I used 2 onions, 2 green peppers, 1 carrot)
6 cloves of garlic
about 6 heaping tbsps of flour
2 cup of milk
A handful of cheese
1 large can of tuna
Salt, Pepper, Sage, and aji to taste (I wish that we had tarragon down here, but I'll have to settle for sage.)
Cook the noodles and the peas separately. You want them on the al dente side. If you're making stock from bullion get that started in the beginning too.
In a large pot or pan melt the butter, add the veggies and saute. About 5 minutes. Add the garlic; let set for another couple of minutes. Add the flour slowly, one tablespoon at a time. Make sure to incorporate the flour each time you add it. Stop adding flour once all of the liquid has been absorbed. Let set for a couple of minutes. Slowly add the stock, stirring after each cup. Then slowly add the milk, stirring, stirring, stirring. Your pot should look like a really thick sauce, kind of like cream of whatever soup.
In the noodle pot (after you've drained the noodles) add the peas, the sauce, the cheese, the tuna and your seasonings. It needs lots of salt, lots of pepper and if you like it spicy lots of aji.
Keep half in the pot and put the other half in a casserole dish, wrap tight and freeze.
All in all, I figure that we get 12 servings from this recipe. We spent under $6 on the ingredients. So it's approximately $.50 per serving. And did I mention it's really filling; perfect after a long run!
Next Ryan's going to repost the Nutella cake that he made for my birthday = WATCH OUT!
