I’ve been thinking a lot about comfort food this week. I’m collaborating on a project with Peter Fuller of the Vincent Price Legacy UK and Victoria Price, Vincent’s daughter which will be happening in November. Watch this space. It’s a really fun project that involves getting your steps in each day. Here’s a clue…

Melissa Gilbert’s recipe for Tuna-Noodle Casserole definitely qualifies as comfort food. Plus, well, it’s got that added bonus of heaps of nostalgia too. Because I don’t know about you, but I can’t help feeling warm and fuzzy inside when I think about Little House on the Prairie.

When I put this photo on Instagram I got more reaction to a food photo than I’ve ever had before, such is the love for LHOTP.

This is definitely something that will cheer you up in these strange times with autumn and winter looming here in the UK. Gloopy tuna pasta casserole goodness!

Looking through Melissa’s lovely cookbook again reminds me of the day it arrived in the post at work.

I was flicking through it and when I spotted this recipe I did a little “eek” of excitement as any recipe containing tuna will always enthuse me. My colleague Anne who sits behind me turned around to see what all the excitement was about. We then had a little chat about how much we loved tuna casseroles before getting back to our work. Those were the days eh? When you sat at a desk with OTHER PEOPLE around you and you could have a chin-wag about tuna casseroles whenever you fancied.

I guess in the absence of work colleagues due to Covid-19 I can chat to you lot about tuna casseroles, in a kind of shouting into the void kind of way, as I sit here at home, all alone all week. Thank goodness for all you wonderful people out there in the dark keeping me company. Haha!

It tickled me the other day, quite a while after I first made this dish, to find a lump of it in my freezer labelled “Prairie Casserole” – what a treat!

Typo on ye olde label machine…

This freezes fine. Cook it up, divide it up, freeze it up and line up your Little House on the Prairie episodes to get you through the next few months of madness…

Want more of this kind of stuff? How about Cary Grant’s Tuna Fish Pie? Or Alice Cooper’s Funky Tuna Casserole? Or Diana Dors’ Flageolet Beans with Tuna? Or Mae West’s Salada de Tuna? Or Tessie O’Shea’s Chez Tuna Fish? Or my favourite of them all, Gene Tierney’s Tuna Salad Royale. Man, this leaning tower of tuna never ceases to make me laugh!

Lift your spirits with some star spangled tuna!

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