And, I'm back!

Hi all! I took the weekend off of the computer, but didn't take off of cooking. The weekend seems to be a leftovers / clean out the fridge kind of day, so I'll jump back to Friday.

Right now, Roman Catholics are celebrating lent. One of the things that means for me is that I don't eat meat on Ash Wednesday, or on Fridays during this time. There's definitely traditional foods that we ate during lent, like Chile con Torta (red chile with fried egg white soaked in it - delish!), tuna patties, and potato pancakes. One thing I don't remember much of was tuna noodle casserole, although I'm sure we ate it sometimes. However, as I looked in my fridge and pantry, that was the winning contender for dinner on Friday - but with a twist!!

As I looked up recipes, the things I found in common are pasta, canned tuna, peas, cheese, a bechamel sauce, and some kind of crunchy topping. I also looked up several recipes for macaroni and cheese, because my feeling is that tuna noodle casserole is basically a mac and cheese with some veggies and protein thrown in to make us all feel better; "look, there's peas! It's got a veggie." What I found on my mac and cheese hunt was a recipe in my "Jamie's Dinners" cookbook (Jamie Oliver, (https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/quick-tomato-macaroni-cheese/) that lost the bechamel sauce, which I thought would make it a little fresher. I did not have most of the ingredients, but since I considered this recipe a solid outline, I moved forward.

Some of you might be wondering how I can use this as an outline if I didn't have most of the ingredients. So, here's a small glimpse of how my mind works when I'm cooking something from an "outline"...

"Hmmm, no fresh mozzarella, or tomatoes, or single cream... What do I have? Well, I have some plain goat's milk yogurt, some gouda and cheddar, and some half and half. Wait, do I see sun-dried tomatoes on the back of that shelf? YES!! Needs a vegetable to lighten it up... OOOOOHHH! Frozen spinach!! Look, there's also some smoked salmon in the fridge - In that goes."

Long story short, I boiled some penne. While that was going on, I combined some diced sun-dried tomatoes, about a cup of yogurt, some grated smoked gouda and sharp cheddar, and flaked the smoked salmon in. Jamie's recipe also had some breadcrumbs on the top. I did not have any bread or breadcrumbs, so I crushed up some green-chile spiced potato chips, and voila!!!

Crunchy topping, nicely browned, bubbling on the outside!! But what was waiting under that amazing looking topping???

Oozy, creamy, smokey loveliness, that's what!! I don't know that I'd change anything as it really did come out pretty much exactly as I envisioned it. As you can see, there's a lovely cocktail sitting right next to the served up casserole. We had vespers and it was quite good. If I had to do the drinks over again, I might go with something less boozy. I think a sparkling wine would be great because it would refresh your palate with every sip.

The next adventure could be something a bit more tame. But since I pulled some things out of the freezer and went grocery shopping today, so who knows??!!