I’ve been thinking a lot about you all. I know things got kinda slow after I finished up the 10th recipe from the cookbook, and then all the holidays happened, and then the ice storms and gray-ass clouds hung over mid-Missouri for weeks. But, I haven’t thrown in the tea towel.

There are quite a few people out there who’ve been asking when I’m going to cook and write more. There are several people who’ve given me old cookbooks or said they thought about me when they’ve seen them lying about, out in the wild. I’ve even seen some of you posting your own old school foods on social media. I don’t know if I influenced you, but I sure hope so. Gaby has gotten even more interested in this concept and is now embarking on a journey to make those recipes but without all the canned, store bought, pre-packaged ingredients. Yesterday she made a pot roast recipe from “Don’t Forget to Add the Love,” another wonderful church lady cookbook from St. Andrews Lutheran right here in Columbia. There’s no date, but it looks to be mid 70’s to 80’s. She followed the directions, but instead of canned cream of mushroom soup, she made her own. She’s going to tell all of you about it soon. I tell you what, that fucking pot roast was enough to blow your oven mitts off.

Gaby, too, has been my biggest cheerleader to get me back to doing this project. So, this week I promised I’d make something for her. I have an embarrassment of riches in terms of books and recipes to choose from, so I feel a bit overwhelmed by which one to pick.

I’ve also managed to find an online resource for scanned cookbooks, the likes of which are at the same time offensive in their illustrations and fascinating in their subject matter. Think: cookbooks from the late 1800s about Southern Cooking or 1900s Chinese recipes. Even more exciting, The State Historical Society of Missouri (right here in Columbia!) has a cookbook collection that I found out about on one of their recent social media posts. I can’t wait to get my gloved hands on those.

I was trying to use the food we already had here for this week’s recipe, but wasn’t interested in ground beef or a roast. The only other proteins we had were a bag of frozen shrimp or a million cans of tuna. I wanted shrimp. A good, old shrimp recipe from like, the turn of the century. I mean, the turn of that other century that people mynage still call the turn of the century.

In all those digitized cookbooks, I could only find only a couple shrimp recipes, and they were shrimp salad or some variation. And I’m here to tell you I spent hours researching. I’m not sure if this is the space for me to give you a “Consider the Shrimp” essay trying to emulate the greats like M.F.K. Fisher or David Foster Wallace, but I think the history is something like this: shrimp wasn’t really eaten back then like we eat it today. In fact, Escoffier, who is responsible for updating French cooking and giving us the modern kitchen, says in his 1907 A Guide to Modern Cooking, “As regards to shrimps, their use is entirely limited to garnishes, hors-d’oeuvres, and to the preparation of soups, shrimp butters, and creams.” I mean, I guess they are a pain in the ass to peel. But I found tons of recipes for oysters, so maybe there was some sort of social stigma in Western culture. I’m definitely going to look into it more. Hell. Maybe I will write that essay.

Shrimp butter was mentioned in a lot of those books: basically, you pound up a bunch of shrimp bits, add their weight in hot butter, strain it, let it cool. Boom. Shrimp butter.

I might even try to make some later today.

So, I couldn’t find a suitable, fun recipe for the shrimp and time was running out. All that was left were those cans of tuna. Dear Reader, I did not use a recipe, but I made up my own, inspired by all of those wonderful casseroles I’ve made so far. I wanted a tuna casserole, but I also wanted a lot of protein and veggies. And I definitely was not going to put chips on top of it.

I thought the celery was a little to crunchy and it maybe wasn’t saucy enough, so I’ve modified the amounts below to help you get a little saucier. Gaby, on the other hand, loved the crunchy celery and didn’t mind the drier noodles. It was just the two of us staring down about 6 pounds of food, and we laughed at the amount. I can’t lie: I love leftovers.

Chef Gaby’s rating on a scale of 0 – Grandpa’s Pasta Sauce: 7

Christuna’s Casserole

At least 10 servings

1 (16oz)package egg noodles

1 green pepper

1 red pepper

1 onion

1 celery stalk

5 cloves of garlic

1 bag of frozen peas (12oz)

3 cans of tuna

1 can cream of mushroom soup

1 can cream of celery soup (honestly, any “cream of” soup is probably fine)

maybe a half cup of milk

3 hard boiled eggs (if you want)

1 1/2 cups shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese

salt

pepper

olive oil

Directions: Cook the noodles according to directions. Preheat the oven to 350.

Dice the peppers, onion, and celery and sauté them, with the minced garlic, in oil for about 5 minutes or until the celery is done buy still has some bite. Don’t forget to salt them! Throw in the frozen peas and cook for a few more minutes.

In a large bowl, mix the cream of soups, cheese, all the veggies, and milk. Add some salt and pepper or any other herb or seasoning you desire.

Add the noodles and fold until thoroughly mixed. Add the tuna and chopped hard boiled eggs and fold until mixed. Be careful not to smoosh the noodles.

Put the entire mixture in a casserole dish and bake for about 20 minutes at 350. All that needs to happen is for the cheese to melt and for everything to be warmed through.