There is something terribly wrong with the concept of a baked tuna fish casserole. It grates against every aesthetic sense that mankind possess. Like antimatter, it is not meant to exist in this solar system. Yet my mother insisted on serving it to me as a child, creating some of the most harrowing scenes of domestic anguish and melodrama this side of Sarah Bernhardt.
Let me set the record straight. I like tuna fish sandwiches, in moderation. And I can tolerate a salad nicoise with some tuna fish in it, as a garnish. But rather than ingest a single mote of baked tuna fish casserole I would cheerfully undergo a season of waterboarding at Gitmo.
To begin with, unless canned tuna fish (for that is all my mother ever dealt with, and all I can afford today) is painstakingly disarmed with a flood of condiments, such as red wine vinegar, lemon juice, salt, pepper, tabasco sauce, brown sugar, and a dab of sesame oil, it smells and tastes just like the cheapest kind of cat food. And I am NOT being persnickety about this; quoting from Wikipedia, on the subject of Canned Fish, under the heading of Tuna: “ . . . with the dark lateral blood meat often separately canned for pet food . . . “ So there.
And that’s not all, boychick. Even though tuna fish undergoes hours of pressurized steam cooking in the can, which kills all sorts of nasty germs, it does not guarantee the absence of histamines that can produce an off putting fetid tang.
Yet many a night at our dinner table, even though I moaned “Oh, the rancid histamines!” my cruel mother would shove a large gooey portion of tuna fish casserole onto my plate and insist I at least try it.
Try it? I couldn’t even LOOK at it!
My mother’s recipe for baked tuna fish casserole was fiendishly simple, and calculated to raise the gag factor in any discerning child way beyond the “choke a goat” factor. Fill a casserole dish with boiled egg noodles, top with a can of green peas and a can of tuna fish, pour a can of Campbell’s cream of chicken soup over it, sprinkle with parmesan cheese and bread crumbs, and bake in the oven at 350 degrees for an hour. The resulting abomination was always served with a side of warmed up canned lima beans -- adding severe insult to injury.
Like many other misguided souls of that era, my mother believed that simple hearty meals, the kind that were imagined to ‘stick to your ribs,’ were good for children -- that filling them up with cheap starches and carbs and processed pet food produced happy and healthy children. What it actually produced, for me anyways, was a persecution complex and an early hint of ulcers. The holy kitchen mantras of my childhood were “clean your plate” and “starving children in China would love to have this to eat!” When my older brother Billy challenged the second one of those axioms by brazenly asking “Oh yeah? Name two of ‘em!” he was chased down the street by my mother with a broom. Good thing he was fleet footed or he’d still be picking broom straw out of his hide.
The final showdown came one winter night in 1961, when I was a very stubborn eight years old. My mother had tried withholding dessert as a motivation to get me to try the tuna casserole. No soap; I turned up my nose until I looked like Bob Hope. Then she tried the opposite tack, offering me TWO helpings of her luscious lemon meringue pie. No dice; I was still not interested. So now it was time for direct action. No more beating around the bush or pussyfooting around. The ukase was clear and simple: You don’t leave the dinner table until you eat some of that tuna casserole. You can stay there the whole night through, if you choose.
I sat, arms folded in silent dissent. The hours dragged by. Dad came home from Aarone’s Bar and Grill, where he worked as a bartender. He had a glass of buttermilk and some crackers for dinner. (What injustice! HE didn’t have to eat the tuna casserole!) My sisters were put to bed. Johnny Carson came on the TV. Still I sat. But my rear end was getting sore, I was terrifically bored, and I needed to pee.
“Mom!” I yelled into the living room. “I’m gonna take one bite, that’s all!” Barely concealing her brazen air of triumph, my mother came back into the kitchen to gloat over this historic occassion. The casserole, naturally, had long ago congealed into a cold disgusting lump. There were no such things as microwaves back then, to warm it up in. I took one small bite, chewed, swallowed, and immediately threw up.
The resulting hullabaloo was uncomfortable, to say the least. But ever after, the dreaded tuna fish casserole was interdicted and never darkened our dinner table again. It is one of the very small number of childhood victories that still warm the cockles of my heart.
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